


the fishes' eyes

by meowtoba



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: M/M, sort of a casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23445082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meowtoba/pseuds/meowtoba
Summary: “Is this seat taken?”Natori starts.That little vulpine smile glints at him from beneath the dim lights of the bar, and Matoba slides into the seat next to his, looking all kinds of out of place in the usual sea of businessmen and tourists.
Relationships: Matoba Seiji/Natori Shuuichi
Comments: 18
Kudos: 58





	the fishes' eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rethrone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rethrone/gifts).



行春や  
鳥啼き魚の  
目は泪

Spring is passing.  
The birds cry, and the fishes’ eyes are   
With tears.

The hydrangea’s leaves are heavy with dew; the whole garden seeming to hang with it, to drown in it— even the pond is swollen; the koi hanging suspended, close to the surface, their round mouths disturbing the stillness, tails splashing, rippling. The engawa’s wood is wet through, and his hands slip as he crawls along it, yukata sleeves hitched beneath his armpits, knees catching on the hem. The cats would have been disturbed by the rainstorm, he thinks; they had a litter of kittens about a month before, and their only shelter was the foundation of the Matoba clan home. 

The mother is a skinny creature; her ribs show through the pale fur of her sides when she sprints down the front lawn, circumventing the tea house and the border of the forest. The cats never seem to venture into the woods, he’s noticed, they stay within the garden and beneath the thick shrubbery, they hide along the sides of the gravel driveway. Never in the forest, though, as normal wild cats should. He wonders sometimes if the wards that are strung in the lowermost branches of the trees; ofuda knitted through with rope, he wonders if they deter animals, too. There have been deer, on the lower lawn, once in a while, however— his mother had looked at him with a sidelong warning as he’d bent his bow, the arrowhead wavering from his target for just the slightest moment before it had righted its course, sailing through to thud into the center, the deer scattering back into the trees.

He sits up, leaving the mother cat to her children. He had tried to reach down and pet the small kittens yesterday, but the mother had scratched him quite fiercely across the arm, her claws leaving red furrows in his skin. Matoba had retracted his hand quickly, holding his wrist, examining the beads of blood that formed. They did not want to be fussed with, it seems; sometimes it’s best to leave feral creatures to their own devices, he’d thought. Lest they sink their claws into you.

The heir is roused from his cat watching by a commotion in the hallway behind him, and the door slides open, the air reeking so strongly of incense that it makes him sneeze, and the mother cat emits a low growl from beneath the veranda.

“Seiji, oi.”

His sister looks at him from where she’s been lying on the other side of the screen door, spying on him through a hole in the wax paper. Seiji glares in her direction, though the action is delayed; he does not dislike his sister, though she seems to dislike him a great deal. He stands and walks over, dropping down to crouch at the small opening.

He sides the door all the way open, and the scent of incense overtakes him. “Sister, what are you doing?”

Her spying on him is no new thing, it’s just that lately, having made a friend, she seems to have lost all interest in bullying her younger brother altogether. She’s above it now, it seems, her attention occupied elsewhere, more concerned with herself and Ban’s private dealings than her usual competitive hatred for her brother.

“Grandmother fainted this morning,” she says, rolling over onto her back, fingers pulling at the tear in the shoji door. “She told father that someone was spying on her while she was changing. Who would want to see that?” She makes a face. “Seriously.”

Seiji manages to glimpse what it is that she’s been fussing with. There is a small, barely visible hole beside the tear in the wax paper of the door.

“But there are wards,” he says.

“Doesn’t matter,” his sister answers, jabbing a finger clean through the door, wiggling it. “Turns out we missed some big tears. There’s a whole infestation now. They’ll be looking at you when you’re in your bath, all white and prune skinned with your ugly bat ears—”

A clamour of activity from within the house causes her to abruptly turn to check behind her, and Seiji glances down at where his sister has been further damaging the door, licking a thumb and pasting down the flap of wax paper that has curled up, allowing a single beam of light in to the dim reception room on the other side. 

Two clan exorcists have brought a large supply of folding screens in from another room, laying them out on the tatami of the main room. The pile grows as more are brought in— some even bearing the prints of old Chinese patterns, some just the bare wood of shutters. There are several that have some— one could say Matoba clan propaganda painted across their pieces; murals of Matoba exorcists dressed in the old kimono of samurai, carrying katana, flanked by all kinds of grotesque youkai, the clan head standing between a pair of lion dragons. There was a time, he supposes, looking at the images, as new screens are carried in, some floating across the floor, carried by shiki, there was a time when the Matoba men were warriors, when they held high standing in court. Their family name is old, the oldest of the eleven Kyushu families.

He looks over at his sister, watching as she looks at the designs too. Never in the history of the clan has there been a female clan head. It offends her, he knows, she watches their mother and Nanase, wonders why she cannot be named her father’s heir. But, her senses are weak and, her greatest detriment: she is a woman in a world of men. When Seiji’s father had promised the title to him, he’d known that only bad blood would ever grow between him and his sister. She’s been done a double disservice by her birth: she has weak sight too, though she pretends that this is not so.

She had been there when his father had taken him to look at the kimono, had noticed that when he described the spider lilies, the faint outline of something beneath the kimono— she had wanted to wring his neck in jealousy, had known that this would take all hope away from her of ever being able to break tradition and take up the ofuda and the curse and name herself clan head.

The Matoba matriarch enters the room; white kimono covered by a black haori, the crimson gash of her obiyage the only colour on her at all.

“One in each room,” she says, addressing the exorcists, a flick of her sleeve and a white wrist is revealed, gesturing to the screens, “until we have the doors patched and cleansed. Priests are coming to begin the ritual, but Matoba-sama will attend to the youkai himself if they fail.”

“Seiji,” his mother addresses him, and Matoba stands, scuttling to his feet, and he feels vaguely gratified as he hears his sister do the same. “Why don’t you and your sister go down to the Western gardens and practice your archery. Your father will come and watch you later to check on your form.”

She turns to the other Matoba sibling. “You shouldn’t be looking into the holes in the walls, or allowing your brother to do it either. I expected better of you both.”

She walks to the pile of screens, looking down at them, hands folding back into her sleeves, her thin face pinched. “Summon some shiki, you’ll graze the tatami if you leave these here.”

From nowhere, melting upwards through the floor, seeping down from the ceiling like an oil spill, the large, long-limbed clan shiki emerge, slinking into the room, their beige yukata unadorned, given to them by the house of Matoba.

Seiji knows well: Mokumokuren can cause blindness if stared at for too long— though no one seems to have been bold or foolish enough to to test whether this blindness is physical or spiritual. Being one of the strongest male heirs in several generations to be born to the clan, Seiji’s sight cannot be risked. Sighted heirs are a commodity among exorcists, and even his sister, with her watery vision, is not the disgrace to their name as she once would have been, two-hundred or so years ago.

“ _Now_ ,” their mother scolds, “both of you.”

They scramble through the doors, Seiji, turning just before he makes his escape after his sister, stopping in his tracks to give his mother a very quick, parting bow. He— loves her. Perhaps the most of anyone in the household. Pleasing his father has ever been at the forefront of his mind, but having her approval has always felt like something both hard won and so precious due to its fragility. 

With that, he’s out the door and bounding over the side of the engawa, disappearing into the hydrangeas and scaring the cats as he lands. He crosses through the topiary garden in order to cut across to the shed first, feet slapping against the flagstones that lead around the koi pond; only the shadows of these fish reflect on the surrounding trees; his sister cannot see them.

Matoba sees them in vivid colour; violet and sky blue, in jewel tones; their scales with their glancing bioluminescence.

He stops as he gets to the shed, panting, and looks back at the main house, the building looming through its crowning of maples and pines; the trunks of the trees bandaged against insects. The roof is as tall as a temple in his eyes, and as large. The South-Eastern wall, the one that faces the formal garden and pond, lined with shoji screen doors, blinks at him with a hundred eyes, as if some massive, terrible spider had made its home behind it, in his family’s house.

His sister’s approaching footsteps bring him back, and he drags his gaze away from where those eyes blink, sliding the door of the shed open. That’s the thing with Mokumokuren, isn’t it, he thinks. They can see either in or out of a house; the side they dwell on would depend on where the observer stands. Their many-eyed gazes can follow you both within your house and from within, looking out.

The scent of incense still lingers in in their air, swept down through the garden by the breeze. Perhaps, he wonders, slipping into the shed to find his practice bow, and the targets, perhaps if the priests do not manage to clear the youkai from the doors, he will hide underneath the engawa and watch his father conduct the exorcism himself. It was always quite something to witness the clan head leading a ritual with his own hands, the power from their cursed contract with that one-eyed youkai would shake the walls.

Why they even insist on trying to patch those doors, instead of simply exorcising the thing in its entirety, he does not know. Sometimes, Seiji thinks, it’s better to burn things that have lost their use, and be done with them.

  
/////

  
Matoba Seiji wakes with a start, hearing the dull murmur of the plane; he and Nanase never fly anything but business class; first is too ostentatious, but economy is not an option. Besides, they are on business after all. He recalls the dream, but only barely, feels something of the humidity of the old house around him now, even in the airplane, and for a moment he had thought he could smell the incense that his mother used to burn, wafting through the gardens, the very plants seeming to smell of it.

Something of that house never quite leaves him, not entirely. He carries it with him, regardless of place— the certainty of home, the obligation of it. This is what it means to be a Matoba clan head; the Matoba estate lives in the back of one’s mind, just behind one’s eyes; injured and uninjured.

He shifts in his seat, glances over towards Nanase, who has her reading light on, glasses slipping down to the very tip of her nose, almost about to fall off. She has fallen asleep with her book in her lap, and there is something private in the image, so Matoba turns away, pulls the suit jacket that he is using as a blanket up, and attempts to return to sleep, feeling called back by that nearly fading whiff of patchouli.

  
/////

  
“Of course, and reserve a taxi for me and my associate, if you’d be so kind. Yes. Thank you, a pleasure.”

Matoba Seiji hangs up, holding the phone in his palm for a moment, before glancing around at the hotel room. No reads on youkai activity, despite the harmless ghost walking the hallway on the forth floor. Hotels, Seiji thinks, tend to have imprints, rather than actual beings inhabiting them. These large, commercial places, with their liminal rooms, their changing clientele? Youkai will follow an individual rather than remain left behind. He wonders, sometimes, perhaps this is their brand of fear; being forgotten, being disregarded. An insipid imitation of humanity; they truly are parasites. 

The emotions of youkai, or what passes for emotion, mean very little to Seiji. Young Natsume, perhaps, has different feelings, but— well. That child may yet grow to find the error of his ways. 

One does not deal with demons and walk away unmarked.

He thinks of Shuuichi, then. The lizard. His own eye. His father’s face that had been half hacked away by the time the man died, finally, in an ambulance (a shameful way for a clan head to finally succumb; Seiji respected his father, yes, even feared him as a teenager, but in the man’s last years? There’s something more, and he would deny even to Nanase herself that it is scorn).

Seiji finds that he misses the clan house when he is away from it for too long. He’s a homebody at heart, it’s true; he’s dwelled in that house his entire life, he was born within its walls. He grew up running through the corridors, feet bare on the floors as he used to rush to the back garden after his lessons, grabbing his bow in a hurried snatch and vaulting off the end of the engawa, scattering the stray cats that still make their homes beneath it, though they are a different generation from those creatures of his childhood. 

There is spell work woven into the rafters of the place; its high arches are the same as any great temple of the older parts of Kyoto city; the architects who built it were Matoba exorcists of hundreds of years ago; they drew their spell circles into the plans, into the initial sketches. The number work itself was imbued with magic, the words carved into the beams and long, sturdy support columns were Kotodama; as powerful as the names of youkai. 

The central point at the peak of the roof, the Morikuni, was always the centre of power of the household, some very old spell work was condensed there, creating the spiritual barrier that engulfed an exorcist’s house. The Morikuni of the Matoba family was not only there to protect against fire, as with most traditional homes, but also against the invasion of enemies into its walls, against feuds, and against poisoned daggers and sleeping potions and draughts that forced clan heads to fall in love with the daughters of opposing families.

He knows the gardens; how the sakura that some Matoba grandmother had ordered be planted in a ring around the koi pond would burst into bloom around the beginning of each new school year. How he’d walk to the local high school and find that the petals caught in his already growing black hair.

He remembers the long days of the boring rainy season; with the clear umbrellas and long stretches of nothing to do but lie on the tatami and stare out at the mist of humidity, and the constant rain, the screen doors flung open despite the garden being as airless as his bedroom.

Of course, he had been only a child during those times.

The exorcism begins at ten, he recalls, and fastens a tie clip over the hem of his tie, setting it in place. He has a tailor back in Kumamoto city that he visits from time to time when he needs suits for his meetings; an old man with a shop that his father and grandfather both used to frequent. Before those two generations, the clansmen did not wear suits at all, only kimono. They were slow to modernise, as a group; his father was far less keen on suits than his mother; she was an old fashioned woman, he thinks, but she did pride herself on European sensibilities. She’d visited France once, with her sister, and had never forgotten it. 

Nanase is waiting near the taxi rank, dressed similarly to him, in her usual boyish cut, glasses resting on the bridge of her nose.

She always appears jaunty to him; compelled forward by vigour— her movements ageless and quick.

“Nice weather,” she says, nodding at him.

“Is that so?” Seiji answers, nodding in turn, and getting into the taxi.

Nanase straps herself in beside him, pulling out an electronic tablet, and flicking through if for a while. She stops, then leans forward, tapping the driver’s seat with a narrow hand.

“Excuse me, we’re going to a street address, would you mind using the GPS?”

She proceeds to read off the address to their cab driver, the man fastidiously programming the numbers into the GPS, having to fumble with a white glove before doing so.

  
/////

Of course, there are sometimes visitors. 

Today, bored from studying, Seiji’s found a pair of adventurous little rodent youkai, who seem to think that sneaking into the clan home is a good idea; they will be terribly nauseous, he thinks, watching them as he lies on the tatami, homework spread around him; he’s supposed to study for an English test the following Monday, but he’s been dozing for the better part of the last hour, bored with the alphabet and the song he’s supposed to be translating for homework.

“Hurry along,” Matoba hisses to them, crouching down, arms resting, stretched over his knees. “Or I’ll tell my sister and she’ll come and eat you.”

The pair cower back from him, their black, currant-like eyes wide, ears flat against their heads. Even youkai know that the Matoba clan children are taught to kill their own pets. He notes the pattern on their yukata; the print of arrow fletching; a favourite of the clan. Perhaps they were trying to blend in, assumed that clan shiki would wear this sort of thing. Perhaps, he thinks, they were looking for a companion of theirs. He’s uncertain of his sister’s collection at present; she is always picking up new creatures to toy with.

“Run, or maybe I’ll eat you first—” Seiji shuffles forward in his tabi socks, fingers flexing at the mice youkai.

“Seiji?”

He flinches upwards, dark head turning towards the sound. His mother, he thinks, cheeks pinkening at the use of his given name. A girl at school had intoned that it was an old man’s name, and he’d made sure that her homework was destroyed before she could hand it in. It’s a name that belongs to his family; his kanji were selected with care by his parents to ward his future, his fate. Names are important, he thinks, they are not made to be laughed at. 

His father is ill, and there’s a heaviness over the house; he’s the youngest, but his sister cannot become the heir, she is too weak, her sight is diluted at best, she could barely discern colour in the old kimono. Seiji had seen the patterns, the gold thread, the weaving between, the coarse tears beneath the spider lilies. It hung upon the topmost branches of the trees; he’d heard a rumour that there was more to the thing, that there was a youkai wearing it, clinging to the tree, that it had been clinging there for a thousand years, since before the Matoba clan were a power in the Eastern woods.

“Sei-chan?”

He grimaces.

He is not in any trouble, though, not with that summoning, and Seiji stands, claps his hands into a mudra and mean-spiritedly dismisses the two youkai, watching them screech in tiny, silent voices, as they’re swept up in a current of the pale spell, swirled off, out of the estate by the characters of his charm. 

Later, after he has brushed his teeth and finished with his evening lessons, he sits on the veranda of his bedroom, feet stretched out before him, the planks still warmed from the late sun. 

There is a flurry of activity about the Matoba homestead this evening; they are entertaining guests from across the country, some coming all the way from Tokyo, some journeying down from Osaka and Kyoto. Seiji has sharp ears; he listens to what is being said by shiki and the exorcists alike; he’s one for eavesdropping; often he crawls beneath tables in order to listen in to conversations that he has no part in. 

The warm air of late Summer carries with it the scent of that incense; but tonight it’s not the acrid smell of an exorcism or protective ritual; this is the woody, spiced perfume of something that his mother has doubtlessly imported; it’s not Japanese, not from within the country at all. Tendrils of smoke curl through the garden and he looks across, through the trees, watches as one of the long, dark shiki slithers through the branches of trees, hanging coloured lanterns in all of the branches.

He and his sister are not invited to the evening gatherings. These are the dinner parties of his parents and their guests; held to keep their clients returning, to celebrate the business that they do together, to toast the luck that they will inevitably bring all of those old politicians and yakuza that spend great wads of money, all of it falling into the Matoba clan’s already swollen bank accounts.

As the evening dims, he hears the crunching of tyres on the gravel drive. The guests will be arriving any moment now, he thinks, picking at the fruit that a servant brought to him. He spits a watermelon pit over the edge of the engawa, wondering if the cats will investigate its landing.

There’s a chorus of voices from the front drive, and Seiji scrambles to his feet, slipping over the engawa and into the hydrangeas, around the side of the house and into the cover of the trees that flank the front. He hides behind a pine tree, hanging onto the burlap cloth that covers its trunk (a remnant from the Winter wrappings).

The Matoba clan head and his wife stand near the entrance of the house; waiting as the dark cars with their tinted windows and white-gloved drivers pull up around the central island. His mother wears red, her jet black hair twisted into the maru-mage of a geisha; it might not be wholly appropriate, but she likes to push the envelope, from time to time. He remembers how she’d take it down to comb it in the late afternoons, sitting on a floor cushion with Seiji sprawled close by, watching the ivory comb split the impeccable black strands, gleaming with the same hue as his own. His mother is not affectionate with him; but she always would tolerate his clingy presence with a quiet patience. He was more like her than he was his father; she was the sharper of the two of them, the colder.

His father wears the black of a Matoba clan head. The ofuda separates him from the rest of the clan exorcists, who mill around, opening doors, greeting guests. His father is not particularly tall, now that he looks at him closely; but neither is his mother. She seems far smaller from this distance; while inside the walls of her house she looms.

There rises the faint note of a shamisen— or perhaps a koto being plucked, and he glances back over his shoulder, looking up at the house with its doors all thrown open to the warm night. 

There will be extravagant party food left over, he thinks, for breakfast tomorrow.

As the sun starts to dip, and more guests arrive, the foxlights are lit. 

The clan has foxlights, too, just like the parties of youkai. They float ominously in the driveway, leading to the entrance of the estate, visible through the trees that separate the long approach, glinting like the demon parades of Obon that happen out in the Eastern forest.

He watches the guests arrive with their women and their hostesses; all dressed in millions and millions of yen’s worth of kimono, from what he can tell. Millions? It’s probably more. The women are beautiful; all in bright floral tones, some have blond hair and it catches his eye; he has only seen that on the covers of magazines, barely glanced at in the convenience store. 

There is a haze of chatter as they walk in towards the wide entrance of the clan home, a host of shiki sweeping alongside those of them who are sighted. Not many are, of course; some of these are private clients, others are closely associated family heads of other exorcist clans.

In the drive way, the cars are parked, and the drivers hang around outside them, some of them smoking, all of them dressed in uniform. 

Nanase is nowhere in sight, he thinks, and looks back over his shoulder again, feeling eyes on him as he remembers her.

The guests disappear into the clan house, and the lanterns glow brighter as night encroaches, the music drifting through the lantern-lit woods.

  
/////

  
Standing in the lobby of the Shinbashi high rise, Matoba glances out of the window and into the pale afternoon, calculating that it must be nearing 3pm, by the way the light is already starting to fade.

The air-conditioning is dry and hot, and he raises a hand to tug at the knot of his tie, hooking a finger there and pulling it down a touch. He and Nanase-san travel infrequently for the clan— however, these big city clients are the bread and butter for them— this particular company that he’s looking into today, well, they were a referral, but a good one. Even Matoba himself had heard about the advertising firm; a black company, he supposes, judging by their penchant for unpaid overtime and the recent suicide.

It’s not the high profile of the client that had caught his attention, however. Intrigue is always the greatest draw; no one loves a scandal more than Matoba Seiji.

“Mister Matoba, welcome, thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

Mr. Nakamura (the CEO of the sports advertising branch, he believes, and if he remembers correctly— a bit of a big man with regard to the upcoming Olympics) is about the same age as his father would be now, had he survived the final attack; well dressed in a charcoal, slim-cut suit. Not quite the look of just any izakaya-dwelling salaryman. He bows to the Matoba clan head, a little lower than is perhaps strictly necessary, but Seiji does enjoy the formality. He returns the gesture (though the angle of his own bow does not directly match his client’s), and smiles his CEO’s smile.

“Oh, not at all. Thank you for having us. I heard about your case from my associate,” Seiji says, joining the man in the elevator, and watching as the floors flick past, the pressure of the space changing as they speed upwards.

“Ms. Nanase is— quite something.”

Ah, he thinks. So— Nanase made an impression. Naturally.

“Indeed.”

There’s a brief silence, and Matoba tries to get a read on the building itself. Frequently, these things are never true hauntings. These clinical office buildings don’t attract youkai; they’re more residential creatures — of course, they like the scent of family drama, the scent of children— rather than ageing salarymen who are too tired to proof a document, let alone become a viable vehicle for a wandering youkai in search of a plaything. There’s a waver, though, in the air, and while he saw no youkai on his way in (barring the small water god that inhabits the shrine between the convenience store and the advertising firm’s headquarters), he’s still prepared to be cautious.

Nanase will not oversee the exorcism with him; she had left him at the entrance of the building to conduct the clan’s business. There were always administrative errands to run when they came to Tokyo; banking that had to be done at their city accountant’s offices rather than by telephone from Kumamoto. She was going to meet with one of their lawyers today, in lieu of playing assistant to Seiji. 

“How was your journey, Mister Matoba?”

“I’m not a good traveler,” Seiji says, “but it was smooth. Your car collected us from Haneda.”

Mr. Nakamura seems— somewhat on edge. “Good,” the man says, “good to hear it. I hope the accommodations are all as you and Ms. Nanase like them to be.”

Oh, Seiji thinks, Nanase has herself an admirer. He must be a glutton for punishment. He’s used her name twice in barely thirty seconds, the -san honorific sounding tacked on, like he wants to use a more girly diminutive but is refraining consciously.

“The hotel is very nice, I’m a creature of habit when it comes to hotels. Actually,” Seiji starts, hands clasped politely behind his back. “The renovation was not as ugly as I had imagined it would be. We,“ he smiles, flashing teeth, “always stay there. My father, too. He spoke well of your firm. Oh my, what a view, look at this now.”

Seiji and Mr. Nakamura both look out the window, Matoba with a narrowed eye against the glare.

“How lovely,” Seiji says, turning away from the viewing point, tone disinterested. “What a pity you can’t see Mount Fuji, it’s so hazy. I wonder if you can ever see it from here, seeing as Tokyo is ah— always hazy.”

Mr. Nakamura seems even more uncomfortable, and he reaches up to tug at the neck of his suit, smiling back at Matoba, though the look barely qualifies as pleasant.

Matoba continues, “So very high up. It’s not very surprising that that employee of yours died upon reaching the ground. That must have been quite the journey.” The exorcist utters a quiet breath of a laugh at his own comment.

Mr. Nakamura pales further.

“I wonder what I will find in this building of yours. Perhaps a ghost. Aren’t we fortunate that worker’s unions do not have exorcists working for them.” There is another _heh_ from the clan head.

“That would be unfortunate for you and your company. The ghosts would have all kinds of things to say I do not doubt. Certainly some of the train jumpers must belong to this company, too. Ah,” Seiji smiles, eyes closed, at Nakamura. “Overtime, hmm? Very troublesome. Nothing for me to worry about, huh?”

“N—no,” the man mumbles.

“Maybe without a change of policy, you will have more ghosts here in the future, lots of work for the Matoba clan. How amusing.” Seiji smiles at the window now, and the door pings, signalling that they have reached their floor.

Mr. Nakamura, for whatever reason, doesn’t seem to be able to exit the elevator fast enough, glancing back nervously at Matoba as they walk towards the main conference room.

Odd, Matoba thinks, he’d assumed they were hitting it off rather well.

  
/////

  
The headquarters of the famous, corrupt advertising company (name withheld, though a Google search would probably turn up accurate results; Matoba will keep their privacy, though he is not all that concerned if others figure it out) is, indeed, haunted. 

He stands in the middle of a stark office hallway, and listens. He had asked for the lights to be switched off in that wing earlier, purely for investigative purposes— and had strolled from board room to board room; throughout the rabbit warren of the seventh floor (the haunting had progressed all the way up, apparently, beginning in the lobby, and making its way through, becoming worse as it hit the forth floor. It was mostly the workers who worked the late overtime hours that had issues with it, but finally, the bosses had been forced to take notice— he hasn’t discovered the reason for this, yet, but he’ll wheedle it out of them, he knows this; he suspects that there must have been an incident, a bad one).

“Lights,” Seiji calls, holding out a hand.

Some gangly office assistant switches the lights on.

There are watermarks all through this particular room’s ceiling and out into the hallway; long brown trails of them, as if mould has entered and spread. It would be dubious even if Seiji were a building inspector, and the fact that they have allowed it to get this bad is a mark of poor management. Unacceptable, he thinks, and turns back to the door, entering the hallway and addressing the anxious-looking Nakamura.

“I’ll need to perform a cleansing. I trust you can clear the building? We wouldn’t want anything taking refuge in any of your staff now, would we?”

Nakamura seems wary of him, for some reason, Matoba thinks, but the man nods, and starts to retreat, hissing at the assistant to contact the company’s secretary. How they will manage to actually clear the building of everyone is quite beyond Seiji; but, then again, would it be so truly tragic if one or two salarymen were to become possessed by the entities in this building? Certainly it would make transporting them to a safer location to exorcise them much simpler.

He would like to capture a few for inspection. Youkai or Yurei, that is. Of course.

Once the building has been cleared (whether or not it is, actually, indeed clear, is far from Matoba’s problem), Matoba stands in the center of the topmost floor; in the middle of a spell circle.

His bow and arrows are strapped across his back, and he listens, remaining quiet, waiting for the awareness of the creatures to slink towards him, to want to find him and see what he is, to see why there is a man alone in their building, why he wants to talk to them.

Sometimes, that’s all a summoning circle is, after all— an invitation.

  
/////

  
Later, when the guests are all well inside the mansion, Seiji creeps back out of his room. There’s music coming from the main hall, this time louder than before; it’s a shamisen for sure, but the pace is fast now; there is a performance, he thinks, and feels his usual curiosity overtake him. His sister, upon inspection, is asleep in her room; she doesn’t care about the goings-on of the rest of the clan; she’d prefer to stay holed up in her bedroom.

There are shiki breezing up and down the corridors, most of them carrying trays of drinks to and from the kitchen, but they pay Seiji no more mind than he pays them, their yukata trailing along on the wooden floors. There’s a loud racket of voices; most of them laughing— he can’t hear any of the women’s voices, just the men; they’ll all be drunk by now, he thinks, and the discussion will be the most lively, before they all start to get sleepy and return to their cars with their hostesses.

There is a loose piece of wax paper; a covering, that was pasted down in the recent Mokumokuren infestation, and it will be nothing to pull a corner of it aside and get a good look at his parents’ guests.

Seiji slinks along the back of the house, along the engawa, finally dropping to his knees and crawling to where the doors have been shut, illuminated from the inside, the long shadows of the party guests stark against the paper. He crouches, and lifts the corner of one of the window panes, the paper crackles but lifts, not tearing.

In front of him, in the corner, there are a pair of geisha, both carrying shamisen; their faces are painted, and he can see the lines of where they used their brushes on the backs of their necks. A moment of embarrassment takes him and he looks away, into the rest of the room, eyes landing on all the various politicians, all of them older, balding; he watches his father talking with one of them, a woman sitting at his side with long auburn hair, her gyaru eye make up immediately a key in that she’s a hostess; she’s a little fat too, he decides, though it suits the man that’s brought her along; he’s a true oji-san, belly and all. Seiji spots his mother, next; the clear jewel of the room; she’s more pointed than the other women, and the red lipstick that she wears makes her even more severe.

They were an arranged marriage; his parents. All Matoba clan marriages are either highly encouraged, via proximity, or arranged. There have been some lesser spoken-of pairings; but marrying cousins is discouraged in this day and age, thankfully. Nanase-san sits to his mother’s left, and they are talking; Nanase’s hair is in a proper arrangement today, unlike the usual, boyish bob she regularly wears. Maybe she and his mother went to get a hair set in town earlier; he does not recall seeing either of them all morning.

Seiji’s eyes travel down to the table, trying to see what they’re eating.

His stomach rumbles, and he’s glad for the plucking of the shamisen music, eyes glued to the shojii door when one of the geisha that sits at the table makes her way to sit between the two musicians, legs tucked beneath her, the silk of her kimono showing a design of youkai; red devils and ghouls dancing across the cream silk.

The shiki melt out of the walls when she comes forward, and sit behind their masters. He sees a whole assortment of them; it’s as if they are brought as trophies, to be shown off, as much as the women are.

When the girl in front raises her hands, standing from her position, the guests all clapping, Matoba recognises the tune as soon as the two musicians begin their warbling. It’s an old enka song that his mother is fond of; she must have been the one to arrange the entertainment; she has specific tastes; she would not allow anything too— bawdy.

The geisha begins to dance, carefully remaining within the two or three tatami in front of the musicians, and Seiji strains his eye. Ah, he thinks, there it is. The insides of her sleeves are sewn with ofuda; she’s the daughter of an exorcist. After all, only an exorcist’s child would know a dance that was born in the forest, far away from any clan houses, conceived in a different sort of celebration, with different foxlights; the dancers would have been horned, clawed.

The lantern light reflects in the eyes of the shiki servants that sit behind their masters, refracting from the non-human lenses like that of many cats, gleaming crimson.

One of the men, in a black suit, his tie already tied around his forehead, has stuck his hand into the fold of the kimono of the girl next to him, his eyes squinting drunkenly at the dance. Seiji glances at his father, whose long, black hair is tied back in a ponytail, the ofuda covering of his right eye stark white in the room, its ink etchings curling over the space where his eye hangs, just about intact, strapped in its socket.

One day, Seiji thinks, that will be himself and his own wife seated before a great audience of their clients and associates. A more powerful family than even now.

The dancing girl bends, back arching, hands in her sleeves, and the shamisen takes on a more morose edge.

The hostess swats at the man’s hand at the table, and they both laugh. He’s so much older than her, Matoba thinks, he must be paying her very well for her time. He wonders if his father goes to those kinds of clubs when he’s on business in Tokyo and Osaka. Maybe.

The youkai in the back applaud at the same time as their masters, and a fox-spirit in an orange kimono looks straight at Seiji’s hiding place.

He sticks his tongue out at the fox creature, and it sticks its tongue out back, sharp, needle-like teeth lining its gums.

One of the guests has rolled up his sleeves, on purpose, he can see— tattoos cover his arms, but they are not the tattoos of just any old man that one would see at the public baths. There are creatures inked into his flesh, the patterns of youkai run up and down his arms in ropey ink, and Matoba watches, eyes focusing finally, and he notes that the ink seems alive, seems to move by itself. It is not a trick of the lantern light; the shapes are moving as if they are creatures themselves, breathing in a different time to the man’s own breath. They’re not any sort of youkai that Seiji has seen before, they’re the sort that humans who dabble too much seem to attach to themselves; creatures that are combinations of other creatures, experiments. He presses his face right up against the screen, wanting to see more, wishing that the sleeve would be hiked further upward so he can watch where those things are running when they circle up, then back down.

The man looks right at his hiding place.

Matoba meets his eyes; some cheap gangster, he thinks, what can he do.

His mother stands. Her fox-spirit disappears and then reappears above her, kimono wafting about it, as if submerged, carrying a long reed of bamboo in-between its teeth, fans held in its paw-like hands, tail swirling in a wind that is clearly not present, not physically. There is applause from the guests, and the man looks away from Seiji, chin raised to see the fox-spirit.

The Matoba matriarch looks at where Seiji had been hiding only moments before; she cannot protect her son from everything; she does what she can with the time she has been allotted, however. 

As do all women who cast off their names to carry a Matoba heir. 

A Matoba heir’s life, too, will be a sacrifice.

  
/////

  
“A little to the left, thank you, Mr. Natori, could you maybe— look directly into the camera?” 

Lights flash, and the assistant races to catch light with a reflector, a makeup artist stands ready, in the wings, to rush forward with her various powders and brushes for a touch up between shots. Natori can’t quite— see, but he squints moodily into the camera anyway, giving a sexy frown that makes him look like a little classic, a little tragic. The director loves it, and there’s a resounding noise of enthusiasm from a few of the others on set.

There’s a green screen behind him; he’s currently on a boat somewhere off the coast of Mykonos, but of course, the production budget hadn’t allowed for that (it’s a local designer, not Tom Ford or anything), and so they’re attempting to replicate the Greek sunlight with more overhead lamps and reflectors than Natori has seen in his entire idol career. He’s sweating profusely through the open linen shirt that they’ve thrust on him, but that seems to be the point.

“Could you— lie back a little, yes, give us— yes keep that look, now, chin up, raise your eyes slowly to— yes, yes!” The shutter goes wild, and a few of the on-set assistants (all young women, early 20’s, carrying clipboards with headsets) applaud giddily, turning to whisper quickly to each other before looking back at Natori. He doesn’t give them the usual charming smile; he's working, of course.

It’s a marked improvement from the photo shoots of his early career days. There had been a certain love of gothic romance back when he was just getting into it— those were the days when his agency had some heavy competition from the Johnny’s idol groups, and Natori can count the times that he’s been both “immortal vampire”, and “tortured pirate” for some promotional poster or another. No one ever said that making it in the J-pop industry would be dignified, and Natori had gone along with each director’s ideas, content to pout and angle his head to the side for the camera. He’d even enjoyed the ‘edgier’ shoots, though he remembers himself, at all of nineteen, being perplexed at having to squeeze into the patent leather pants that they’d handed him. Eyeliner had also been an affront to the teenage Natori Shuuichi, but now, he bears it with the best of them. 

After all, this will be paying for his annual New Years vacation to Hawaii. He’s never been one for Winter, and the weather in Waikiki will be excellent in December and January. He might even start back up on those English lessons, he thinks, and bites his lip for the camera, to more applause and cheering. Finally, he gives the ladies a wink, which is more than just well received. 

There is some shrill tittering, frantic tapping at iPhone screens.

Of course, he’ll wire money through to his father’s account, too. But— that’s a monthly deduction, usually. He only sends extra on New Years, and for the man’s birthday. It does not necessarily keep the peace (there is no peace to be kept; there is no communication at all), but it does stave off the guilt from the door, somewhat. At least the man is living comfortably in his old age, Natori thinks, and leans back on an elbow, waiting for the hairspray to settle and the makeup artist to retreat once more. It is more than he deserves (he feels guilty for thinking like this, naturally, but some things simply cannot be helped).

The lizard is enjoying the warmth of the overhead lamps far more than Natori himself, he notes, glancing at it, and it scuttles along to his shoulder, basking. It’s like this when he’s in Hawaii, on the beach (a rare vacation, now and then! He’s got that sun, sand, beach thing down, and he looks hot with a tan). 

The set is crowded; more-so than usual. Turns out the investors had wanted in on the whole process, so they’re seated in the back, along with several personal assistants. He smiles at them too, between takes, and earns himself a round of respectful nodding. It’s the director they’re keeping an eye on; having Natori Shuuichi on set is an investment. He is expensive; a mere hashtag from him could probably make them a pretty penny.

“Mr. Natori could you— arch your back? Lean in towards the camera, yes, like that.” The shutter continues to snap at him, and he, well, arches his back. 

He’s not shy, after all; these photo shoots are simply things that come with the territory of fame. Anyway, he’s got a talented personal trainer back in Kumamoto who’s been whipping him into shape for the Summer season, and really, there’s not much he won’t do for his fans. Perhaps there are certain people who would say that it’s shameless, he thinks, giving his best, most cinematic stare at the lens, but they’re not world famous Japanese idols, now, are they?

  
/////

  
After several costume changes (they’re straight forward, luckily; it’s not as if he’s wearing enough in any particular scene to warrant much of a fuss), and probably enough hairspray to ensure he’ll be feeling sticky for the next twelve hours, they finally wrap.

“Incredible work today, Mr. Natori,” one of the assistants tells him, trailing along after, as he slings on his jacket and heads towards where the taxi that they’ve called him is waiting for him in the parking lot. “It’s been my dream since I was a teenager to— work with you.”

It’s sweet, he thinks, flattered. “Well.” A brilliant smile. “I’m sure I’ll see you again. Today was fun, wasn’t it?”

It wasn’t, but he’s a good sport, always. Besides, she is cute; young. This industry will squash her, probably. So, let this be a high point in her career. Though, he does wish her the best, he decides, not that he’s optimistic. Being both female and young in the entertainment industry is hardly a strength to build upon. Slugging it out in Tokyo from the ground up must be a real drag, he thinks, her apartment is probably the size of a matchbox, unless she still lives at home, which is more likely.

Nanase, he thinks, for a moment, would be absolutely fine here.

But, she has got enough on her plate being Matoba’s keeper, and that must be a task unto itself. 

He wonders what she knows, sometimes, wonders how much she’s seen that he cannot conceive of. She’s been by Seiji’s side (and on his case) since he was a high schooler. What has she been privy to that Natori was absent for? It’s silly to think like that, though. He was working in the city, and Matoba had no need for his friendship. They were never even friends to begin with, they never quite managed to get there, despite how they’d tried.

The driver bows to him, and gets back into the drivers seat, the back passenger door opening. Overhead, the sky has darkened even further, threatening an unseasonable rainstorm.

  
/////

  
Kumiko had called him earlier, while he was on set, and it’s only in the car that he sees the missed call. They’d worked on that movie together last year— he’d played her lawyer; it had been a period piece (the Shōwa era truly is where he shines most; he looks great in a hat). 

Anyway. Long, dark hair is kind of his— type, per se (not that he’s overly fussy) and they’d slept together once, after the wrap party (he’d been terribly drunk after they’d all ended up at some excessive private karaoke near Roppongi crossing, and she’d been— terribly persuasive).

There had been a sizeable share of Line messages, back and forth; she was polite and demure; soft spoken. It hadn’t lasted of course, and had only repeated itself once after a chance meeting in a Kyoto restaurant. She’d been filming the latest season of her television drama, and he’d been on holiday. Anyway, twice was something of a record for him— exorcists can’t really have private lives in the normal, everyday sense of the word, no more than idols can; it’s dangerous to those around them, dangerous to take on wives or to have children unless you’ve got a clan surrounding you already. 

He doesn’t expect that he’ll ever marry.

They’ve stayed in contact, at least, and he unlocks his phone, glancing down at the photo she’s sent. Tokyo Tower. Ah, so she’s back, then.

Some company couldn’t hurt, he thinks, and tries to picture his evening. Alone at the hotel restaurant, he supposes. Not that attractive, and definitely this side of depressing.

He’s in Tokyo so rarely, why not.

He calls her back.

  
/////

  
Customarily, Kumiko keeps her tone softened. 

Perhaps, Natori thinks, this is simply her style when she chooses to speak with the men that she has an interest in. He’s sure that he’d heard her whine at her agent over the phone in quite a different accent (she’s got that hint of an Osaka twang; not quite Kansai-ben, but she’s learnt to flatten out her vowels; cautious to sound like a lady of better breeding and not the rough, first generation town girl that she definitely is). His own Kumamoto accent had been equally squashed, the extraneous little tells that signalled he was from a small town in Kyushu were clipped by a voice coach faster than he could learn to act, only ever to emerge when drunk and slurry (apparently it’s _adorable_ , so he’s never been bothered about it).

He meets her outside Nakameguro station, at the East exit, near the river, and she steps over to him, her handbag held neatly in both hands. Natori bows to her, then steps up to kiss her on both cheeks (not altogether too appropriate, and probably not proper, but— he likes this little— faintly outlandish, faintly European gesture. It always shocks and surprises the ladies he works with. Perhaps, it’s even charming). 

“Shuuichi, long time no see,” she smiles, and places a hand very carefully on his forearm. 

“Yeah.” Natori keeps pace with her as they walk down towards the riverside. “I saw the pilot of the new show.”

“Oh?”

“It was wonderful, though you were quite clearly the star. Your costars paled, obviously. You were out of your boyfriend’s league,” Shuuichi laughs, a little performative, but he knows she finds him funny.

She seems to like that, and delicately hides a blush with a sweep of dark hair. She’s cut a fringe, recently, Natori notes, and it suits her. When he opens the door of the small wine bar, following her in and taking her white coat, he wonders why he never actually considered dating her. There’s no reason not to; she has all the aspects that catch his eye— she’s kind, she’s opinionated. And, he likes her hair (she knows this; she’s worn it down today— usually it’s up, in an unfussy chignon).

They get a table near the back; he’d wanted to take her to the Omotesando place that he likes (the one with the rooftop bar! He’s even friends with the owner, he’d have gotten them the best table and nice champagne— maybe a bottle of Cristal or Dom and everything; that’s how you treat a lady)— but she’d told him it was too showy. She’s currently dating a high profile director, and it would be utterly ruinous for her to be seen with Natori Shuuichi on her arm, even just as friends. He’s not known to be a womaniser (dating publicly as an idol would be a scandal regardless of how he went about it), but he’s nationally (and internationally, thanks to the last film) adored enough to cause a ruckus.

If he remembers correctly (and look, he does not remember much from their wrap party, aside from the karaoke; after that, it’s a series of Tokyo night clubs in and around Roppongi, more VIP tables than he can count (they ended up at someone’s friend’s bar all the way across in Ginza, which was actually a hostess club, which the friend hadn’t deigned to mention, though that was just fine; hostess clubs are great fun if you have the cash to spend; pretty girls, such talkers!), and then he was in bed with his costar and hungover), Kumiko herself is a bit on the wild side. Even if she works hard to appear as if this is not the case. 

“Any plans for your time in Tokyo, Shuuichi?” She asks, and lifts her glass to her lips, watching him.

He does the same, pausing to swirl the wine and briefly smell it (which is stupid, he supposes, but it feels like good form just to make the motion… even it just smells like alcohol to him; one day he’ll try his hand at wine tasting!). 

“I wanted to go to that jazz bar. Maybe see a show. I’m booked here until next week,” Natori says.

“No sightseeing, really?”

He smiles, drinks his wine. “Nobody to go sightseeing with.”

“You don’t like being on your own?” Kumiko raises her eyebrow at him, and he realises that she’ll probably invite herself along.

“Oh, no, not that—I mean— it’s a little boring. Shopping, Tokyo Tower, Roppongi Hills.”

She shrugs and takes another polite sip from her glass. “I rather enjoy the sights, but, you’re not wrong, it’s nice to have someone to share them with.”

Uh oh. “—And you? Plans?”

“Work, as you know. When’s the concert tour?”

Natori laughs, politely, and waves a hand. “I’m not planning one, or I mean, the powers that be aren’t. And you? Any album releases I should take note of? I’m sure you’re a dancer. You’re a dancer, right?”

Oh, she likes that, he thinks, and watches the way the woman’s face turns to a kind of pleased, feline smirk (she reminds him, just for a moment, of Seiji— which is ridiculous). 

“No, though you have me beaten there. You’re a very good dancer, Shuuichi, I saw your music video. And a clip of the concert, on TV.”

Ah, that. Well. 

He’d practiced for weeks with the backup dancers in order to make that whole thing look good (dancing lessons, studio time, rehearsal after rehearsal— and still, exorcism on the side!). And fine, he’d enjoyed it. There was a certain showmanship required for working an audience through an entire concert— he’d reveled in it; the costumes (some really nicely cut suits, then some really nineties coat that was probably borrowed from an early Kat-tun tour), the fireworks, the fact that he sold out Tokyo Dome in a matter of hours— the screaming fans, every time he strolled over to the edge of the stage to talk to them, asking them questions, teasing the girls. He’d even enjoyed the more tedious aspects; the costume changes, the heat of the lights— it had been fun, he’d like to do it again. Pity he has no more time, given the demands of freelance exorcism.

Anyway, he pulls his thoughts back from the edge of the concert stage, and back to the wine bar, and Kumiko.

He wonders what Matoba would make of all this.

Probably about the same as his father does. 

Nonsense, distractions. That has never stopped his father from accepting those cheques, though. Seiji is not his father, however, he reminds himself, Seiji’s got half the world on his shoulders. 

He’s probably never even been to Tokyo.

  
/////

  
The rain picks up again as Natori rides back to his hotel in a taxi; eyelids half shuttered at the faint headache the wine has given him. He ought to go shopping tomorrow before work— Natsume and his family will be getting souvenirs, as well as his agent. Perhaps he’ll get something nice for the Kumamoto talent office; he ought to look into moving closer to Tokyo someday— but, he won’t, he thinks. It’s nice to be close to home, whatever that is. The general vicinity, at least. The exorcist meetings, all that. He wonders how good business is for the city exorcists; he imagines that it’s a little more tricky to work with such over-saturation, and also with a lack of youkai. He’s seen almost no shiki servants in his time around here— the traditions of exorcism are simply more concentrated in the rural areas.

Or, perhaps people in Tokyo have simply started to forget the old ways, the myths.

This is not, he thinks, leaning his forehead against the glass now, the case in some of the other countries he’s visited. But, then again, exorcism varies from place to place. 

No culture has the same shiki (except for those who enjoy boats— though he can’t imagine a powerful youkai stuck on a cruise liner. Imagine: little Hiiragi in New York. She’d be miserable; all the people, the buildings— he wants to laugh at the image, and misses her, abstractly— there’s no reason to call on his shiki for this trip though, so he will not). 

He wonders how much the Matoba clan know of the international circles, if they communicate with them, if they attend the conferences. He’s had little to no communication with the clan head over the past six years, so he can’t say for sure; the business at the Miharu house had opened something, though, he supposes, a door, a window. Something barred and shuttered and difficult to climb through. 

It’s a pleasant drive from Nakameguro back into downtown central Tokyo, where he’s staying, and the rows of dead-looking cherry blossom trees that line the Meguro river speed past, flickering between the buildings until they cross the river bridge. Finally, they turn to take the route that runs along the North end of Yoyogi park, and at last rounding the high wall of the palace, towards Tokyo station, and Natori watches, wondering why he doesn’t come to Tokyo more often. He’s had plenty of opportunities, but he tends to spend any free time taking on assignments. 

It’s a pity, he thinks, it’s not a bad place. He’s still young; maybe there’s a career here for him, the chance to go further; Seoul, Hong Kong. Maybe he could get an English coach, start taking the acting not just seriously but—

“Sir, that’ll be ten-thousand yen,” the taxi driver turns to him, stopping the meter.

It’s more pricey than the taxis back in Kumamoto, of course, but the agency covers all of his transport. And— he’s Natori Shuuichi. Money will never be an issue for him, and never will be— possibly for the rest of his life. Even if he quit working here and now, he’d be able to grow old in relative affluence.

The Imperial hotel is not necessarily his go-to, far from it, but still— he has grown to like the old glamour of the place. When he comes to the capital by himself, without work obligations, he tends to choose something a bit more flashy; he’s fond of the Ritz Carlton, will compromise and sometimes do the Hyatt for a change. 

Maybe, he thinks, stepping out of the taxi and nodding at the staff on either side of the hotel’s entrance way— maybe he should have invited Kumiko back with him here, for a drink. But, the thought of spending more time with her, of feeling the gecko crawl across the back of his neck while discussing her new film, the inevitable ascent up to his room where he would probably sleep with her— there’s something uninteresting about it, inflicting himself on her again, only to start ignoring her Line messages after she starts to rekindle her interest in him. Maybe it’s cruel, but he feels the distaste for her starting already; it won’t be long before even talking to her is a task.

Natori Shuuichi has one of those quiet lives. 

Not necessarily in the traditional sense of quiet, just that no one really knows the shape of his time when he is no longer on show for the audience, when the lights are off and the crew have begun packing away their equipment. He leaves the sets with smiles and waves, and he disappears. There are technicalities that one would usually share with friends and family, that he keeps secret because there are no friends close enough to listen and no family interested enough to want to hear the mundanities of his life. He does not tell anyone how he moved into the company housing when he turned eighteen, how he did not accumulate many possessions because he did not have the space for it, and was sharing quarters with a bunch of other idol hopefuls. How he was stressed about his dancing at first because he was shy and ungainly, how he felt the dread curl in him at the thought that he may fail his training and have to return in defeat and penniless back to where he came from, to see the smug look on his father’s face that would greet him at the front drive of his old home.

His first successes too, were all private.

The public performances of covered songs, the meet and greets, how he climbed in the agency’s favour to become the darling of their payroll, earning him all kinds of contracts in other cities. He’d gone home alone, finally in private housing (though small, it was his own, and it was not his bedroom in the old, empty clan house, and it was not the storage shed where he used to stay awake to do his research, seeking solitude and a break from the oppressive gloom of that house), and opened his emails on a phone that the agency had provided; seeing that he was going to Tokyo for a meeting with a big modelling agency.

After that, after Tokyo, it was parties and more contracts; he grew up fast.

The Imperial bar beckons to him, his favourite bartender is working tonight; he’d made friends with her the last time he was here, and she told him all sorts of nice things to do around Tokyo. She’s a bit homey looking; round cheeks, but she’s sweet, and knows a whole lot more about cocktails than he does, and recommends whatever’s good on and off the menu.

“Hey—“ Ah, oops, he has forgotten her name (it’s a bar; it’s definitely not his fault). Natori smiles; wide and warm, and glances down at her name tag. Right, Aoi. “How’s it going, Aoi.”

Aoi beams at him, and clasps her hands in front of her, skittering over to where he’s already sat down. “Mr. Natori, welcome back, please sit down.”

A little late for that, he thinks, but smiles at her anyway. He’s always preferred the company of women to men; maybe his entire life. Aside from say, Yorishima. But, there’s something different about Yorishima; it’s that same thing that sets Matoba Seiji apart from the men that Natori dislikes and gets along poorly with. 

He’s never really gotten along with Matoba, however.

Thinking about Matoba Seiji at a bar, he decides, paging through a menu, is not a good place to begin an evening.

  
/////

  
The typhoon is supposed to hit tomorrow, his mother had said, ushering him into a suit; there are no more kimono for the city funerals; not like in his father’s day; there is a call for a certain kind of formality at these gatherings, and a kimono simply will not do. They drive in convoy, it’s exciting— he hasn’t seen some of the various cousins in many months, and all of the dark Matoba vehicles pull into the drive of the funeral home; the ashes and bones will be separated, of course, there is no casket here; they are not Catholic. The funeral will only appear to be westernised in the stark monochrome of the Matoba family’s formal wear; his father, he knows, would have preferred kimono. His mother was never quite as tethered to the layers and layers that comprised the clan dress; she had a closet of barely worn Yves Saint Laurent, Dior— perhaps she liked the opportunity to be somewhat showy, despite the occasion.

The typhoon crashes down as guests have begun to queue in the courtyard; Matoba family funerals are massive affairs— they are well connected; hundreds visit to pay their respects, though they do not attend the wake service itself and only come by the house to bow to the bereaved and admire the flowers that would be labeled with their family name; all in competition with each other. His father is usually included in all of the proceedings, along with the other male relatives of the deceased; even a funeral is looked at as a chance to ingratiate, naturally.

Everyone runs for cover; his mother included; she had her hair set done early that morning at a small boutique in town, and she holds the brochure over her head, strands coming down as she hurries, her short heels clacking on the pavement. Seiji’s father claps him on the shoulder in a brief pat, ushering him into the adjacent hall where the refreshments were supposed to be served only after everyone had finished their bowing and exchanging of envelopes. There are some boys, standing around with their parents, just a little older than Matoba— he recognises them; they are Matobas too, from the Kagoshima branch; his father’s side of the family, and they glance over at him, gazes curious.

Seiji steps behind his mother, not making eye contact.

She seems to notice, though she says nothing, instead turning to his sister to scold her for taking her hair down; she always does things like this; she’d threatened to cut it once with a pair of nail scissors, and earned herself a quick slap from their mother.

“It was wet from the rain,” his sister says, and his mother gives her a look, daring her to continue mouthing off.

Matoba’s father has already left them to greet the various relatives; Seiji, and his mother and sister are the immediate family of the clan head, but they wait in the wings at most functions; while many of his duties involve the physical protection of the clan, he is in many ways a politician too; keeping all the relations in check, reaffirming the ties between the families.

There are all kinds of shiki attending, too, as is regular with an exorcist funeral; Matoba drifts away from his mother and sister, towards a group of exorcists standing around with their Rokurokubi; the long-necked women creatures that, if he recalls correctly, do not have many uses as far as being workable shiki; they are not as fierce as a dragon, and not convenient servants like the Matoba clan creatures that they created themselves. He wonders at them, watching their heads floating above the circle of exorcists, their painted, geisha-like faces looming near the ceiling of the building. Why an exorcist would keep a creature that was purely ornamental, he cannot be sure.

“Oi, you boy.”

Matoba flinches around, blinking at where the voice came from.

“You must be the little Matoba princeling.”

Seiji narrows his eyes; the man addressing him wears a kimono, not a suit like the rest of the funeral goers; his hair is a dirty grey-brown, and his face is narrow, drawn, one arm in a sling.

“Yes,” he says, curiously tilting his head. “I’m Matoba Seiji. Who are you?”

“Call me Yorishima,” the man says, though he doesn’t bow with the introduction. “I’ve known your family for a very long time.”

“Oh,” Seiji says, watching him with a suspicious gaze, trying to place him; a relative? He’s got a certain similarity to him to some of the branch families’ faces, but he’s unfamiliar, strange.

“You tell your father that I send my regards to him,” the man says, a bitter-looking smile taking over his face, and he tucks his hands into his kimono. “Let’s both hope you’re nothing like him.”

Abruptly, Matoba is aware of a presence at his back, and he feels a cold, thin hand take his own tightly, and he looks up, and at the pointed face of his mother.

“Mr. Yorishima,” she says, chin tipped upwards, regarding the man. “Why don’t you tell him yourself.”

“Look at this,” he says, “the Matoba are out honouring their fallen. I see you’re missing some party members.”

Her narrow fingers squeeze Matoba’s own, and she looks down, addressing Seiji. “Go to your sister, make sure she isn’t going off with your cousins again, we couldn’t find her last time.”

Reluctantly, he lets go, drawing away from them both, and the man, Yorishima, turns beady, pale eyes on him.

“Get used to this, little lord Matoba,” he says, gesturing to the proceedings around them. “Surely you’ll be attending a lot of these in your lifetime.”

Seiji gives him a cold look, not entirely certain what he means, and he drifts off, but only enough to remain in earshot, finding a convenient spot out of sight of his mother.

“Do not talk to my son,” she spits, drawing up to her full height. “There’s no place for you at a clan funeral.”

“I’m a personal friend of the deceased,” Yorishima answers. “Isn’t it convenient how fast your rival clan heads fall.”

“Natural causes,” his mother says, and Seiji knows this tone; it’s usually a sign to simply give in and agree with her. “Your implications insult my family.”

“Your family.” There’s a strange look on Yorishima’s face. “Your family are villains.”

“Then best you tread carefully.”

“The Natori clan have a boy, too, with the sight. I’m sure you’ve heard. Your old enemies are rousing.”

A large crowd of exorcists, and the reappearance of the group of Kagoshima cousins interrupts Seiji’s secret viewing of the scene, and he’s forced to move back towards where his sister is sitting at one of the tables, a bored expression taking over her face when she sees him.

“Where’s mother?”

“Busy,” Seiji answers, eyeing her sidelong.

“Whatever,” she says, and continues to ignore him.

  
/////

  
“Is this seat taken?”

Natori starts.

That little vulpine smile glints at him from beneath the dim lights of the bar, and Matoba slides into the seat next to his, looking all kinds of out of place in the usual sea of businessmen and tourists. It’s the eye patch, he thinks, it always catches stares, always seems so unnecessarily showy despite how very essential it is to Matoba’s safety. He’s wondered for so long at the scar beneath it, but not so deeply as to wish to see it. There are some things that aren’t for him, and that’s one of them; Seiji’s private pain is his own, and is best left to him and that old house.

“This is not a coincidence,” Natori says, eyeing Matoba, then raising his drink to his lips, finishing the last sip of whiskey (he’s not really a whisky man; he prefers champagne and wine and sometimes, if he’s drunk, the odd vodka, just here and there— but he’d felt a bit obliged to order a whiskey; the bar of the Imperial kind of lends itself towards it; it looks like an old smoking lounge, it’s very— masculine), and ordering another.

“Actually.” Seiji’s voice, as always, drips with honey— or crude oil, whichever. “I was here on business. I assume you are too.”

Matoba clears his throat (sounds kind of fussy when he does, Natori thinks), and summons the other bartender, raising an index finger to press against his chin as he considers.

“A highball, please.” Matoba looks over at Natori. “Something amusing?”

“No, not at all,” Natori says, stirring his own, new whiskey with a pinky, he raises both eyebrows. “I just didn’t take you for such a salary man.”

“So cruel, Natori, are you a grumpy drunk?” 

“Excuse you,” Natori says, leaning back (he is, actually on his third, so no, not drunk— but not sober, either). “I’m a lovely drunk, you just haven’t had the privilege. I’m super fun.”

“Is that so?” Leaning an elbow on the bar counter, Matoba looks back at him, over a jacketed shoulder. “Super fun. I see.”

“You’re making fun of me, that’s fine, I’m okay with that.” Natori waves a hand, and stretches out his drink towards Matoba’s, gently clinking the glasses together. “Cheers, to the health and wealth of the Matoba clan, right?”

“Mm, indeed,” Matoba says, his smile looking a bit— perfunctory. Maybe, Natori thinks, that irritated him.

“I mean it,” he says, more quietly, nose in his drink. "You know that.”

“I know,” the clan head answers, before taking a sip of his own. “Your help last month was appreciated.”

“It’s nothing,” Natori says, shaking his head, fringe flopping forward.

Seiji remains quiet, visible eye staring at the bottles that line the mahogany counter across from them, and Natori thinks for a moment he can hear him exhale a sigh, though it’s too soft to be sure. Natori feels the morose discomfort in his gut that always seems to accompany any time spent with Seiji; whenever they’re not working on something, pursuing something— when the atmosphere clears and is calm— he always feels turned out to drift, ropes cut; extraneous. 

Matoba’s profile is so clean cut, he thinks, his nose almost just too sharp to be Japanese (mixed blood in the Matoba line? Doubtful, but— he does wonder), his eyelashes are lowered. They’re girly, he thinks, then feels cruel for thinking that of Seiji; he wants to be kind. It’s often difficult, with Matoba, however.

Maybe it’s just as well he didn’t invite Kumiko back here, Natori thinks, he wonders what Seiji would have thought if he’d seen him here with her, and for some reason the thought makes him more uncomfortable than anything else so far this evening.

“So.” Matoba’s finished quite a significant amount of his drink already, in a very short space of time, Natori notes. “What brings you to Tokyo, Natori? Your fans, surely.”

Seiji’s got— a little flush around the tips of his cheeks. Across the bridge of his nose. Matoba a lightweight? Natori stares at him; it would make sense, he supposes; Seiji’s really skinny, kind of lanky looking, there’s probably muscle on him, but not much. Maybe he is a lightweight. It shows in his face at least.

“Uh,” Natori answers, realising he’s been silent. “Yeah. A shoot, I’m promoting a men’s cologne, you wouldn’t be interested.”

“Mm,” says Matoba. “How Amusing.”

Such a great conversationalist, Matoba-san, Natori thinks. 

“Actually,” Natori pipes up, turning in his chair so that he’s facing Seiji now, his knees apart, legs wide to accommodate the other barstool, one foot stretched so that it rests on the base of Matoba’s. He pauses, then: “Actually it wasn’t anything special, my agent books me into all kinds of things that I have no control over.”

Matoba glances at him. “Is that so.”

“Mmhm,” Natori finishes his drink, and jerks his head towards Matoba’s, too. “Another round, thanks.”

A very thin, black eyebrow is raised at him, but the clan head doesn’t argue either; his drink’s almost finished. Seiji’s wearing that weird little smile again; though the flush on his cheeks is more pronounced. One drink, Natori thinks, well. He’s probably just— not a regular drinker. 

“How about you, Mr. Matoba? What brings you all the way to Tokyo?” Natori leans back again in his chair, nodding thanks at the bartender when their new drinks arrive. He pushes Seiji’s towards him, is bemused when Matoba sips it straight away. Is he nervous? He wonders; he’s drinking fast. Natori himself is feeling all kinds of relaxed; even Matoba’s presence feels warm and welcome, like an old buddy; hasn’t he always hoped they’d be able to share a _kanpai_ together? He’d imagined it a few times, particularly when his idol star was rising; he’d thought ah, he’d go back to the hometown, back to the countryside and call Seiji up, arrive in his nice car and take him out; for old time’s sake. Maybe bygones would be bygones. They would laugh about the difficult pair of teenagers they’d once been; grown men now, adults with responsibilities, mature, hard-working. Both successful.

It never happened, of course, he’d been back but in short bursts. Been at exorcist meetings, but avoided the Matoba clan head. Nanase kept somewhat up with him, in her way. He wonders sometimes, how much of that was for Seiji’s sake, and then he wonders why he’d ever assume that. They had been friends, though, once. Almost.

Both of Matoba’s hands are on his glass, and he traces a pattern into the condensation on the side of it. “An exorcism. But nothing that would interest you.”

Oh, Natori thinks, so he’s being funny now.

“Surprise me,” Natori says. “What happened?”

The Matoba clan head glances over at him, then glances again (he may actually be feeling tipsy by now, Natori thinks; Matoba’s never this obviously emotive).

“Actually,” Seiji starts, and takes another drink, holding his glass. “It was a corporate haunting, quite a scandal. I can’t name names.”

Seiji looks at him again, but there’s that wicked, conspiratorial set about his mouth; he’s seen it more times than he can count; it seemed to be Seiji’s resting face when they were teenagers; that look dragged him into all kinds of trouble back then— saw him sneaking beneath table cloths, in the forest in the middle of the night, chasing down some youkai or another, or even on the Matoba clan property, his hand clasped tightly in Seiji’s bird-like one, the thin fingers digging into him, palm sweating against his; all to watch some awful Matoba clan ritual, down in the woods (that Seiji had been told he was to stay in bed for).

Ah, Natori thinks, Seiji wants him to guess.

“Angry ex business partner?” He ventures. “Suicide from overwork? Umm—“

“Oh yes, the latter,” Matoba jumps in, and Natori can see that he just wants to tell the story, not really willing to wait for Natori to fathom it out by himself. “There had been a spate of deaths in this company, all from the rooftop. The place was crawling with yurei, I have never seen so many; not all from just this generation, too, older ones. You can _imagine_ the chaos it was causing with the fax machines— _heh_.”

Seiji does this thing, Natori thinks, where he’ll laugh at his own words, as if he were the most amusing person to ever have uttered a joke in poor taste. It’s not necessarily endearing, but there’s something that falls in the vague area of cute about it. Or— awkward. A combination.

“Oh, wow, the fax machines, awful,” Natori says, finishing his whiskey, knowing that Matoba has no real need for his input, not once he’s gotten going on a tangent.

Matoba does not read the air, not at all.

“Yes,” he says, nodding. “And most amusing of all, they not only had an infestation of yurei, but a _tenjoname_ — how long has it been since you’ve seen one of those in the flesh? Ah‚” Matoba smirks, “I mean, not quite in the flesh, of course.”

Natori nods, knowing that this may be a bit of a long haul.

“Anyway,” Seiji continues, taking a considerable drink of his highball. “This ceiling licker was very large, I’d thought to even collect it and take it back to the clan house. But, it was quite unruly. You should have seen the marks on all of their conference rooms’ ceilings; it looked like they had leaks, all the way through the building. I can’t imagine a landlord would be too happy, seeing that kind of damage, ah.”

Just idly, Natori wanders if there is going to be a point to this story, or if Matoba is enjoying the sound of his own voice. It is, he thinks, a beautiful voice; if Matoba had been cursed with both his brand of loquaciousness, and a grating voice, there’s no telling how many clients he’d have personally lost the Matoba clan.

“There had been numerous possessions, too, all by the ghosts of— one might say— some rather unlikely senpai. Some people get very attached to their work, you know, they were not even choosing to haunt their former homes. Anyway,” he continues, “the news of this issue had made its way into a small but popular newspaper. I will not say which, but I’m sure you would be able to find it without too much hassle at a convenience store. Lawson carries it.” Matoba’s eyes glint merlot in the bar lights, and he sips his drink. “As I was saying, from the newspaper article, the news was picked up by that website that people use so much these days.” 

He means Twitter, Natori thinks, having to school his features purposefully into something attentive, so that he does not laugh.

“Those union types turned it all into a labor issue, of course,” Matoba says, narrowing his eye at Natori as if they’re sharing a fun, nationalist joke. “The recent deaths all came to light then too, and by then, the news made its way across the entire country. Quite unnecessary, but, you know the liberal Tokyo crowd.”

Natori is, actually, one of those… ‘liberal Tokyo crowd’, but, he perseveres, nodding, making the right noises of agreement.

“They made a large fuss, it even was translated and the Americans got ahold of it. My client was certain that they’d lose their standing in the advertising world, and that the company would go under if provision wasn’t made,” Matoba says. 

Natori vaguely thinks he’s heard of this story before, and it hadn’t involved any youkai.

Seiji smirks. “That is where the clan were called in. They are trying to write it off and please the liberals by blaming a haunting. Ah, it is amusing.”

Matoba trails off at last, and Natori thinks; he’s never seen him like this; so at ease; casual. They’ve never spoken in this way. Alcohol seems to loosen the clan head’s tongue even more than usual. Interesting.

“Crazy,” Natori says, nodding in agreement, signalling the bartender to top them both up again (they’re drinking quickly, he notes again; perhaps they’re both nervous around each other, in their own ways; that story kind of warranted a drink, though, so he’s sure he’s excused. And on the other side, Matoba’s throat must be dry after that).

The new drinks arrive, Matoba finally having stopped talking. Natori orders some bar snacks, they pick at those, too. He can’t quite stop himself from glancing at Seiji’s hand when he reaches to take a few kakipi from the bowl in front of them, watching the narrowness of his wrist as it tapers into a sinewy hand. They’re not pretty hands; not much about Seiji is actually, conventionally attractive. Natori’s used to the model types around him; all those beautiful actors and actresses with no pores and cushion foundation skins. Seiji’s probably never used a product in his life, and he’s also almost off-puttingly wiry.

Time to change the subject, Natori decides. No more— politics talk from Seiji. Ever again. Hopefully.

“Did you have dinner?” Natori asks, lounging in his seat, feeling the alcohol blessedly relaxing him, finding that he’s using a different tone on Matoba now, and he thinks that Seiji could say anything in the world to him and he wouldn’t get angry, wouldn’t react or feel attacked or belittled. He’s got— a sense of well-meaning towards him, and to probably everyone in the entire hotel. Possibly even his old, mean father. All good, really, all great.

“Hm? Yes.” Seiji nods, crunching on some of the snacks. “The client took Nanase and myself out. She’s retired early.”

“Oh, I was going to invite you,” Natori says, tipping his chin into his hand. “If you’re still in Tokyo tomorrow, maybe we could meet up.”

Matoba looks visibly hesitant, though Natori can see he’s smiling in order to mask it. He doesn’t do that thing— the smirk; his little signature— so well when he’s drunk. It limits him, makes his expressions more easily read.

“I’ll be returning to Kumamoto tomorrow evening, so, another time, Natori.” Seiji watches him, mouth curved. “My loss, of course.”

“Sure, another time.” Natori waves it off. He’s not feeling rejected or dismissed, not at all or in the slightest, not with all that alcohol in his system; he’s totally mellow. A cool guy.

He frowns as he watches Matoba crumble one of those crackers between his fingers, and thinks, momentarily that the guy’s fingernails could use a trim. They’re a bit— feral-looking, like an oji-san; the type you’d see at a public bath with his business partners on lunch break. Gross, Natori thinks, wanting to laugh. Between the alcohol flush and the skinny wrists, and that, he can’t help but find Matoba more accessible than he’s ever found him in his entire life. Matoba Seiji has been untouchable ever since they met; born with better sight, born into a family that wanted him, always those one or two steps ahead of Natori, always happy to never let him forget that, too. But here, they’re on Natori’s turf; Natori’s grown in his own ways, outside of that small town, that tiny, far off prefecture. Matoba feels human, he thinks, tonight. And he’s always felt a little guilty for holding him to standards above that, but— Matoba had set those standards himself, always enforced them. He’s not a normal guy, but. Natori has, since they were teenagers, wondered what more there was to Matoba Seiji; what sad little human secrets was he hiding. Not— meanly, in a mean way, though. He’s never been able to shake that wish to be closer to him. No matter how cruel (or infuriating) Matoba was.

Seiji looks a bit awkward, he thinks, and sighs, his smile gentling.

“Hey, let’s do that, actually, when we’re both back in the countryside. Maybe you could let me know when you’re in the city.” There, olive branch extended.

“Maybe,” Seiji says, and he smiles in that coy way. He’s so red, Natori thinks; the poor guy probably doesn’t drink much; probably goes to bed at 9pm, wakes up at— six. Meditates. 

“Maybe,” Natori echoes, copying his Kyushu accent, but deepening it to match Seiji’s. “Maybe.”

Seiji huffs an amused breath. “You changed your accent. I noticed.”

“No more Kyushu dialect for me, Matoba, my coaches didn’t like it.” Natori takes a long drink of whiskey, wishing he’d ordered red wine this time, but— it’s better not to mix.

“Hm, is that so?”

Matoba’s being a bit weird, he thinks, though Matoba’s always weird, so. Natori downs the rest of his whiskey and thinks, whatever, and orders wine— a bottle.

“That’s right, yes. I’m sorry— am I boring you?” Natori smiles, holding his wine glass out, but realising Seiji’s finished whichever drink that was. He waves the barman over, and interrupts Matoba before he can elaborate.

“Ah, wine, saké? I don’t know what else you like drinking.”

Seiji blinks, something amusingly slow about the way he does. “I’ll— join you, with the wine.” The man clears his throat, nodding at the bartender.

Natori smiles at him, raising his glass to Matoba’s once the waiter has filled it with a jovial _cheers_.

“You’re not boring me, Natori,” Matoba says, tongue wetting his lower lip after a sip of wine.

He hates the flat accent, thinks the acting and modelling worthless and shallow (adjectives interchangeable), is certain that Natori will shirk all responsibilities and likely never return to Kyushu, Natori thinks. Seiji doesn’t continue or give an explanation either, which is just like him. He definitely hates the accent. He’s probably laughing at it, secretly. Probably thinks Natori’s all— country bumpkin playing around in the city.

Well, he reasons, if he’s a country bumpkin, then so is Matoba. He grew up in a forest on a— commune. Basically— what else would a regular person call the Matoba estate? Exorcist commune, that’s what. No better than those cult members who pass out fliers outside train stations to unwitting foreigners.

Matoba’s hand patting his shoulder wakes him so far out of his assumptive spiral that he just about jerks his hand and spills his wine with surprise at the sudden contact.

“Uh, hah, yeah? What’s up?” Natori says, a brilliant smile taking over his face, near instinctually.

“I have to use the restroom, if you’ll excuse me.” Matoba pauses, that exposed red eye flickering over Natori’s face for a second, and Natori’s smile dims. “Save my seat, if you don’t mind, I won’t be long.”

Matoba smiles at him, still with that ridiculous red flush across the bridge of his nose.

That long, dark ponytail disappears in the direction of the hotel bathrooms, and Natori abruptly feels a wave of guilt at ever thinking a poor thought about Matoba, maybe in his entire life, and he’s hit with a wave of nostalgia at spending time with him; he’s not such a weirdo, he thinks, he’s a bit odd, but it’s fine. He’s grown up kind of pretty, too, and it’s from a totally unbiased perspective; in fact, he’s definitely got features that could look fashionable if he got a better haircut and stopped wearing boring black suits. People would probably call him gorgeous, if those people were not Natori Shuuichi, really! Because he is, actually, in that ethereal way. Fine bones, all that.

Natori glances after him, and takes a long breath, a long drink of his wine. He tops up his own glass while Seiji’s away, quickly, before he reemerges from the men’s room. 

That’s just how it goes, sometimes, he thinks, a dazzling smile aimed at the bartender.

  
/////

  
“I got this great bottle of champagne from my shoot today, do you want to come up and help me drink it?” 

There is a morbid curiosity in him that wonders how far he can take this, how far it can be pushed. If he will live to see that concave body without clothing, if Matoba has ever had sex before, if he’s waiting for the marriage bed, if he’s into men. Natori’s always suspected, but never wanted to assume. Over the years, he’s become quite proficient at reading if someone's attracted to him; he’s been around it so often; he’s worked in modelling, been on the odd international set even, here and there. All the parties. That sort of thing; one learns. It’s not a great thought, though, he decides, it’s underhanded.

Tonight, he thinks, he’s going to be kind. He’s always— hoped to be able to be kind to Matoba, and here is the chance, presented, dropped in front of him.

Matoba’s looking at him from time to time, when he thinks that Natori won’t notice. 

But, he has.

“No, I don’t think so,” Matoba says, smiling.

“Please?” Natori rests an arm along the back of Seiji’s chair, poking his shoulder blade with a finger. So bony. “Just for five minutes.”

Seiji actually does sigh now, and Natori wants to laugh at how pink his cheeks have become from the alcohol. “So demanding. Fine.”

That was easy, Natori thinks, and feels the familiar guilt.

When the elevator doors open, Natori stands aside, pressing a hand to the other exorcist’s lower back to guide him in, and he realises that this is maybe— a habit, from being with girls.

“Don’t laugh; they booked me the corner penthouse suite, it’s really nice though, so you can’t be too mean,” Natori says, feeling like he wants to show off to Seiji, to impress him even though things like expensive hotels are probably just the norm for a Matoba clan head. 

Matoba says nothing, just regards him with his uneven gaze, and Natori wonders how drunk he really is, if perhaps he, himself is the drunk one and he’s just assuming Seiji is too. But the flush is there, unmistakable, if nothing else, he’s a good stretch from sober.

Matoba might not be a lightweight at all, he thinks, feeling himself sweat; the guy might just be trying to get a major one up on him, then tear him down. Something evil and manipulative like that.

He feels bad immediately, and touches a hand to the other exorcist’s elbow.

“If it’s a bit late for you, I can just walk you back to your room. You probably want to wake up early tomorrow, I guess,” Natori says, offering him a sympathetic look.

“No,” Seiji answers, immediately. “I’m fine.”

“Oh,” Natori says. “Okay, then— great. Me too.”

Matoba smiles at him, and he smiles back, feeling something almost emotional in the pit of his chest at the exchanged looks. He’d never thought they’d be able to be— so friendly. Getting drunk at a bar, going to hang out in a fancy hotel room? That’s the kind of thing you do with someone you get along with— someone you get along with really, really well. Natori’s never had a close male friend. He clears his throat (something—catching in the back of it. He is not getting drunk emotional in front of Matoba Seiji), waving off Matoba’s concerned look, cracks a lop-sided smile at him.

The elevator pings at the penthouse level, and Natori sticks an arm out, in front of the doorjamb, ensuring it doesn’t close on Matoba.

“Uh, after you.”

Seiji looks back at him, and it’s quite clear that the guy was going to push in front to exit first whether Natori said that or not.

  
/////

  
“You knew I’d be here,” Natori says, half reclined on a sofa near the window, looking the picture of a magazine centrefold; hair mussed, all casual and approachable in his charcoal sweats and t-shirt.

He’s not approachable, Matoba thinks, feeling his thoughts run thick through his head; overcrowded from the alcohol and indiscernible; stuck together.

“Nanase likes you,” Matoba says, waving a hand. “She keeps tabs, how should I know.”

“Oh.” Natori stands, picking up his champagne glass and moving it over to the other side of the coffee table, closer to Matoba’s. He then moves too, to sit on the opposite couch, next to Seiji.

“I don’t dislike you,” Matoba says, blinking at him.

Natori takes up a lot more of the sofa than is necessary; he stretches his legs, lounges against the backrest. Matoba could touch him, if he reached out, just a little.

“Wow, so generous, Matoba,” Natori says, eyebrows arched. “I feel so appreciated.”

Seiji’s lips thin, and he reaches for his glass of champagne, sipping it, attention directed away from Natori.

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing, I don’t dislike you either, hah,” Natori says, and drains his own glass in one go.

Maybe, Matoba thinks, a little unevenly, Shuuichi is a morose drunk. Something about the image suits him; he can imagine him getting grumpy, doing that sort of— sulk thing that he’s noticed. Despite the alcohol, too, he thinks, there is still something uneasy between them; some sense of disquiet. He feels, not for the first time, that he has made a mistake in coming here, with Shuuichi up to his room. He’s not such a fool; he knows what it looks like, what these sorts of things can lead to; between himself and Shuuichi, however, everything is tenuous.

Matoba eyes Natori, watching as the man leans over to pour himself another glass of champagne, tilting the bottle clumsily, despite holding it the correct way; thumb in the punt of the bottle, glass clinking dangerously as he pours some over his hand.

“Here,” Matoba says, as if he weren’t just as drunk as Shuuichi. “Let me do it.”

“Hah?” Natori says, looking at Seiji and then shrugging. “Fine, go ahead.”

Matoba misses the glass entirely, and Natori catches the neck of the bottle just in time to stop him from pouring it on the floor.

“Excuse me,” the clan head says, though he smiles, mouth quirking upwards. “I sometimes underestimate my depth perception issues, you can imagine, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure,” Natori echoes, though he’s smiling; the change in the atmosphere, palpable. Natori shifts closer on the couch, an arm reaching behind Matoba, and laying along the backrest, bracketing his back. 

  
/////

  
“Do you want to kiss,” the actor says; flatly, not a question.

Seiji stares, trying to gauge whether or not he’s being made fun of.

“Yes,” he answers, blinks; drunk.

Natori nudges their mouths together with no further ceremony than that, fingers fitting to the side of Matoba’s face. It’s— gentle, Natori’s eyes have turned half-lidded, but still seem focused, intent. Kissing is not, much to the clan head’s chagrin, on his personal list of mastered skills. See, a lot of his time in his youth was spent running around forests, chasing youkai, sneaking into exorcism meetings and of course— studying. Girls did not want to kiss him; he was mean, he teased them. His adult life has been coloured with the duller tones of all of his responsibilities. Kissing has simply just—never found him. Not in the way that Natori does it, at least, not like this at all.

Natori kisses like he’s on a camera, like it has to be perfect, flawless— has to move at the correct angles and it’s both warm and inviting and maybe a little too practiced for comfort. The actor takes the lead, of course, his hand against Matoba’s jaw, guiding him (he doesn’t want to think that perhaps Shuuichi can sense his lack of finesse. That would be too humiliating to even voice).

He pulls back, abruptly. “Keep your tongue in check, Natori.”

“What?” There’s a whine in Shuuichi’s voice. “That’s how people kiss, I’m not going to be passionless.”

“It’s inappropriate, people do not kiss like that. Perhaps foreigners do,” Matoba says.

“Don’t call my kiss inappropriate, that’s so cruel,” says Natori, and he seems— not insulted, not really. Underneath the whiny tone (which admittedly, is somewhat attractive).

“People from all over the world want to kiss me, you know. You’re very lucky.” Natori— sparkles.

He’s been found out, Matoba thinks, Natori is teasing him. He must have guessed— guessed that French kisses are not an abundant thing in the secret history of Matoba Seiji. 

Humiliating.

“Fine, continue then. But don’t be so—“ The clan head frowns, glares at Natori. “—Liberal.”

“Chaste, I got it. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to be gentle with you.”

Matoba wants to kill him.

This time, it’s worse, far worse— dizzyingly so. Natori holds him as if he is brittle, threads his fingers back into his dark hair and pulls him in closer, an arm around his waist, lips puckered (a little— stupidly), pressed first to Matoba’s thin top lip, then the corner of his mouth, this action repeated again and again so that Seiji feels his heart lodge in his throat, pulse skittering upwards at the care shown to him. They move, and Natori presses him into the bed, cautious to keep his weight off him, but still remaining close; blond fringe hanging down, brushing Matoba’s forehead.

There’s a long exhalation, finally, as Matoba relaxes into it, his arms loosely around the other’s neck and shoulders. His eyes slip shut, and he opens his mouth to it, at last, going back on his own word, allowing for the intrusion of Shuuichi’s foolish tongue, meeting it with his own, cautiously. The other exorcist’s nose presses against his own; he imagines they must look like a pair of idiot teenagers, making out like this. How unbefitting of a clan leader. It goes on for ages, he allows it to.

Shuuichi tastes like the champagne he’d been drinking; slightly acidic, mouth cool. Matoba’s uncertain what he’d imagined before, a long time ago, when he was a teenager, bored in English grammar classes, not so long after he ran into that handsome blond teenager who had looked so out of place at the exorcist meeting, who he had immediately seen as more interesting than any youkai attending, than any other old, dull exorcist coming in to ingratiate themselves to the Matoba clan. 

Found him interesting; of course he had. He’d been fifteen. He was only human.

Natori pulls back with a parting smack, then another one— soft, noisy. A little excessive. There’s a warm fogginess in Shuuichi’s expression when he looks down at Matoba, though, and that pleases him. 

They watch each other in the dark.

Matoba is the one to lean in, and he feels his hands shake, feels Natori take hold of his hips, hears the other exorcist’s breath stutter.

He takes so few things for himself; the clan takes everything from him. This, Matoba thinks, this small indiscretion— what harm can it cause.

Surely, not everything is sacrifice, not everything ends in flurries of dust or pierced with arrows.

He feels Natori’s forehead press to his own, and tries to conjure a protective prayer, something that doesn’t require breath or sound.

His hands still tremble with tension as they touch the other exorcist’s neck, and he wonders, perhaps, if he is imagining it, or if he feels an answering nervousness in Shuuichi, too. 

The clan can’t have everything, maybe. Not always.

  
/////

  
One night, when he was much, much younger, far from Tokyo, it was the eve of the Hyakki Yagyō — the night of one-hundred demons, and there was a pale pink moon hanging in the sky above the clan house. He did not know Natori Shuuichi yet, and he had just turned thirteen; the age of adulthood for most clan children. Usually, for most, the only way to stay safe from this particular night is to stay inside, to keep the shutters locked across all windows and doors. There is, of course, a charm known by exorcist families that allows protection from the parade— but to anyone that might glance out of a window, they’d see only a spectacle of unbridled pandemonium. Anyone who makes eye contact with the revelers who pass through each village of Japan, each side street in Tokyo, all the way from Northern Hokkaido to the tip of Okinawa— or sets foot out of a door, would be spirited away, carried off to their world of untold horrors, never to return. There was murder, of course, too— no good tale about youkai did not contain some beast or another leaving behind the shoes of an exorcist, and dragging his body out to the woods.

The charm is simple, even children learn it.

The Matoba clan utter no such spell. 

Despite his mother being the proficient eldest daughter of a powerful Oita family, she would remain at the clan house, along with his sister. There is a tradition in the Matoba clan for men to hunt on the eve of one-hundred monsters, and some of their strongest shiki have been captured during this time.

Tonight, Seiji would be joining them too.

He sits in his salt bath, feeling it on his skin already, crusting. He will take another bath when he returns home— two, actually, first of salt again, the second pure water to wash the salt from his skin. Spirits hate the stuff; they line all the doorways in the home with it. Cleansing before and after these big hunts is always necessary.

“Seiji?” He hears his mother call him. 

He wraps himself in a towel, then dresses in a yukata and pads out of the large communal bathroom; they’ve salted the family home’s onsen for tonight; there will be saké and celebrations later on; the trays floating between all of his relatives as the hunting party takes a final bath, all probably content and jovial from the hunt, boasting about their catches, about the new shiki that they will be training over the coming weeks. A few of his uncles and distant relatives are staying at the clan house this week, in preparation for the demonic parade; the atmosphere is festive, as if it’s the night of some grand matsuri celebration; like the ones that he has heard about in the cities; that run through Fukuoka, Osaka.

His mother waits for him, holding a black kimono over her arm, something drawn about her face. She seems tired— all the time, he thinks, watching her; though she is still taller than him by a few inches and seems imposing, regardless.

“You’ll be wearing this tonight.” She holds out the item, and he takes it, examining the fabric.

Like a beetle’s shell; the black hides some deeper colour. Red, he thinks, but it’s invisible to an ungifted eye; even to his own, and he has to strain to see the faint magic.

His mother steps forward, and takes up the sleeve of the kimono, holding it out. She folds back a corner.

“There are blessings in the lining. Do not be surprised if you feel paper crackling when you walk. It is the ōfuda,” she says, stroking a hand over the sleeve and allowing it to fall.

Mother and son consider each other for a moment, and Seiji nods to her; the movement very close to a bow.

Outside, in the driveway, there’s an assembly of exorcists; the clan and their affiliates; he can hear them talking from within the house, their voices catching on the breeze. There’s a frenetic air; they will be wearing full kimono tonight, will have their shiki at their heels and ready to begin the walk through the forest, to catch the youkai when they cross through the clearings— they’re fond of knolls, of little hilltops; often revelers can be caught drinking sake in their circles there. The ropes will be drawn across the entrances to the forest; the ones closest to the clan house, so that they cannot enter the grounds by accident. Cornered is not the best way to catch a youkai, but it does ensure a chase with a foreseeable end; there is always the danger of being lead on a chase deeper into the woods than intended; and that is where the danger lies.

It’s why this forest is strung with with paper charms; not only do they serve as traps, but also as a trail of breadcrumbs, leading wanderers back to the clan house.

Matoba exits the house, his mother in tow. Nanase joins them at the genkan, bowing to his mother first, then himself.

“Lord Matoba is ready to lead the party,” she says, and Seiji sees his mother meet her eyes. “He requests the clan heir join him to open the ceremony. There will be a gift of blood.”

That’s just the thing about the gods that the Matoba deal with; they’re not the whimsical _kami_ of shinto priests.

“Seiji,” his mother says, touching his shoulder. “Go to your father.”

He leaves the pair of them there, at the entrance way; it’s odd— usually, Nanase would be accompanying such an expedition; she is not usually confined with the other women in this; too valuable an asset to a hunting party with her jade stones. Matoba looks back as his feet hit the gravel drive, geta shoes worn without socks so that they do not slip if he were to have to run.

Nanase stands beside his mother. There is a similarity in their faces, he thinks, as if they were distant relatives. They are not, of course; Nanase is no blood relation to either side of Matoba’s bloodline. There has never been a time when he has not seen them in each others’ close confidence, however; they conspire endlessly, he has watched them, their shadows on the screen doors, their low whispering at the evening dinners. Sometimes one grows to resemble those closest to them, he supposes; no wonder he looks so different from his sister; who is narrow-faced and unattractive. Nothing like him. At all.

The assembly of exorcists turn when the clan heir steps out; a stab of ink in his black kimono; face pale and unmarked. 

They bow, as is customary; low and respectful.

He looks towards the head of the crowd, finding his father. The clan head’s hair has been taken down for the hunt; an oil-slick down his shoulders, a red kimono setting him apart from the rest of the exorcists. His longbow is in his hand; the bowstring gleaming with its preternatural haze, arrows in a quiver on his back. Seeing a clan hunting party, gathered and ready go enter the woods— it is not so difficult to imagine them standing at the sides of Shoguns. There was a time when the Matoba served the emperor, when they carried katana, when they marched their shiki through town openly.

His father nods to him, and Seiji bows; ninety-degrees, his head forward, eyes on the ground, feeling the eyes of the whole party fall to him, knowing that if this hunt goes poorly, he will lose the respect of the clan, will contend with the disappointment of his father.

But, he thinks, imagining the dark paths of the forest, its old ways and shifting trees, the ones that he has explored since he was a child, then he thinks of the youkai within it, on this night, of all nights— with his eyes, there will be not a single clansman in the crowd who can see as he can. He feels a thrill in his chest, a shudder of excitement.

After all: he was born for this.

  
/////

  
Natori’s arms are around him.

Matoba wakes up in a quick jolt, immediately panicked, but he calms himself, controls his breath. There’s a sharp headache behind his eyes, and his mouth feels rough, dry, his lips raw, as if they’ve been grazed. His movement seems to wake his bedfellow, and Natori stirs, though more slowly, nosing against his temple and huffing there quietly for a moment, his hold tightening as he tenses his muscles; stretching without letting go of Seiji.

“Did I give you a fright?” Natori murmurs, face dipping to press against the crook of Matoba’s jawline, his breath a humid constant against the skin there. “Your heart’s racing.”

The actor raises his head, pulling an arm away to lean his cheek in his palm, face hovering above Matoba’s.

Natori looks— ah, he’s so handsome, Matoba thinks, mouth opening but remaining silent, feeling lulled by the extraordinary heat of Shuuichi’s skin (which is—very nice, he realises, in its entirety; a little… tanned). Seiji shakes his head, finally finding his voice.

“I’m well.”

Natori’s lower lip protrudes just slightly, and he leans forward, nudging his mouth against Matoba’s and then parting from him with an embarrassing, wet sound, and Seiji feels his chest cavity collapse and melt, a pang of something almost painful running through him. He’d kept the ofuda on all night, and it crinkles when he moves, blinking tiredly up at Natori.

“I ought to be going,” Matoba says, voice clipped into perfect neutrality, lacking his fox’s smile.

“Too bad.” Natori’s equally neutral expression confuses him. “You’re trapped.”

Shuuichi is— making fun of him, maybe, he thinks— joking? He’s never quite been subject to this sort of joking before, no one has ever— not so stone-faced. Natori starts smiling soon after though, his expression thawing, eyes the warmest shade of chestnut Matoba can think of.

“Sorry,” Natori says, leaning to give him another kiss, which he accepts, pathetically, chin tilting up to catch it. “You can go whenever you want, I’m only playing.”

This is a different Shuuichi, he thinks, one that he’s never met, the one that Natori grew into away from him. It’s almost as if he’s a stranger, some entirely new acquaintance that he never knew, never had met that evening at the exorcist meeting. There are sides to Natori, he knows, that have developed far away from him; Shuuichi has had experiences that are so distant, so absent from himself that he would barely recognise them, certainly. He’s not the same difficult teenager as he was during those years; of course he isn’t, how could he be? He’s had to grow too, had to adapt; he’s not been able to stay the same, though neither has Seiji. But— Seiji’s the less altered of them both, he thinks, the one who will remain left behind, when Natori finds that this world of his is too great a draw, and that the archaic politics of exorcists no longer hold his attention; Seiji’s politics.

“I can’t stay for long, I’m flying back to Kumamoto this evening, as I said, and I have— errands,” Matoba says, knowing that he’s just giving in, really.

“I’m not going back yet.” Natori lies back down next to him, slipping an arm beneath the pillow, shuffling in closer. “I’ll probably be shooting retakes tonight.”

“Hm. When will you return?”

“I don’t know, why do you want to know?” There’s a slight— lift in Natori’s mouth, and Matoba raises an eyebrow at him.

“I’m being polite.”

“Can I see you, when I do come back?”

Seiji’s mouth feels dry again, his headache throbbing anew. “You know where to find me.”

Natori pulls back again, enough so that their eyes can meet, and there’s all hint of playfulness gone from his look now. Matoba wonders what permits such seriousness; they’re not even close friends.

“You know what I mean, like this.”

Seiji’s expression doesn’t flinch. “You want to have sex again.”

Natori’s expression does, and he winds his arms back around Matoba’s waist, pitching forward to drop his face in the other exorcist’s neck. “Don’t say it like that, yes of course I want to. But I want to do other things, too.”

Shuuichi’s hair is very soft, he thinks, and raises a hand to stroke the wisps of it back down; they have become absolutely unruly; there’s a very slight kink in the strands, as if maybe, were it to air-dry, it would be curly. 

“I have a very busy schedule, Natori-san.”

Natori tightens his hold on him, emitting a long sigh. “You’re being difficult on purpose; I know what this is, you want me to beg.”

“The Matoba clan do tend to prefer to have others in our debt, so perhaps.”

The blond head rises, Shuuichi’s nose inches from his own. The man smiles, but there’s something closed in it now, as if he had pulled his touch away altogether, as if he has left the room, perhaps, closed the door behind him and ended things between them. Matoba wonders at it, at how he can feel that something is off between them; deeply out of sync. He wonders what it is that Natori thinks of this, if he is just being kind because he feels some sort of guilt at crossing this line with him, when they were drunk. He wonders if they will ever see each other again after this, or if this will break apart what remains of their tentative connection, and leave it in ruins after their heavy-handedness. 

Seiji watches him, lifting a long-fingered hand and very carefully parting that blond fringe with a forefinger, stroking it to the side so that it no longer hangs over Natori’s eyes. “Are you very used to things going your way?”

“Yes,” Natori says, without hesitating.

Seiji hums quietly; yes, he knows. Nothing came easy for Natori Shuuichi, all of it has been hard won. He’s seen how the hard work has paid off; knows that it was only by the grace of his own determination that he has managed to work two demanding jobs (one spiritually, physically, mentally— the other quite the same, though less spiritual), and succeed in both (perhaps the acting has been more successful than the exorcism, but he has worked his way into relative success amongst the community; they like him because he’s so handsome, obviously; people are predictable). 

Natori’s looking at him with that doggish expression; his mellow, inviting eyes promising all sorts of things that are really out of his hands, and that maybe, Matoba thinks, do not exist at all— Shuuichi wears many disguises, after all. Matoba feels abruptly exhausted by their conversation; he’s just woken up, and he’s nursing a hangover; it’s too early for this, too much all at once. Natori has no consideration for a person’s constitution, he thinks, it’s actually nearing on rude.

Natori’s raising his hand now, thumb stroking over one of Seiji’s eyebrows. “Your eye is all red.”

Seiji closes it, and leans back into the pillows (a king size bed, of course; only the best, he’s quite sure, for Natori Shuuichi’ s visit to Tokyo). 

He nods. “I don’t make a habit of drinking.”

“Oh,” Natori says, and he can hear the smile in his voice. “Yeah, I guessed. You don’t look so great today.”

Seiji’s silent. He feels Natori come in close, feels a hand slip around to rub his back, but he retracts it fast enough. Matoba feels the actor move away from him.

“Go back to sleep, I’ll get you some water.”

If he opens his eyes and sees him, he is sure that he will crumple at his kindness, so he keeps them closed, and turns his back on Shuuichi, settling into the blankets. Natori stays a moment longer, but then he feels the mattress shift (very slightly; expensive), and Natori’s heat leaves the bed altogether. He can’t sleep now, of course, he’s wide awake; he hears Natori pottering around the hotel room; hears a suitcase unzip and then hears him talking on the phone. He strains to listen to what’s being said, but the door to the living area is closed so it’s muffled. He stays out there for far longer than it takes to collect a water from the fridge, and Matoba feels himself slowly relaxing, half aware that he ought to get up and excuse himself instead, that he should just make the required apologies and leave.

“Mr. Matoba?”

Seiji raises his head, considering Natori, who is leaning over him, holding a bottle of water.

“Your water, Mr. Matoba.”

Natori’s doing it again, he thinks, and takes the water, shuffling to sit up in bed, back against the pillows. He will not rise to this, he thinks, Shuuichi is being formal in order to— he isn’t quite sure of it. Actually, he’s not quite sure of anything that has happened between them; there is a certain kind of instability to it all, as if touched just a little too clumsily, it might all crash into absolutely nothing.

Natori fusses around as he gets back into bed too, rucking the sheets up and letting them fall just at that point where his abdomen dips, the faintest trail of blond hair leading downwards. He’s put underwear on, at least, Matoba thinks, drinking his water, realising that he’d been looking.

“Did you have— plans today?” Matoba asks, controlling a surprised blink as Natori shuffles in close, but seems to refrain from touching him any further than that. He wonders if he is simply respecting his space, or does not want to touch him at all, is now unhappy with this, with everything.

“Sleeping, yes, I told you already. Night shoot. You’re not a very good listener.”

There does not seem to be a way to escape this bed, Matoba thinks, glancing over at Natori. He hums in answer, and offers the water bottle to Natori, holding it near his face. Natori takes it, and immediately takes a drink, stopping to cast Seiji a sidelong look, the bottle next to his lips.

“Indirect kiss. Cute,” Natori says, leaning back, his eyes shutting, unsmiling.

The actor shifts down in bed, capping the bottle, and reaching over Seiji to return it to the bedside table; it’s a bit of a stretch, but Shuuichi seems comfortable with doing something like this, Matoba thinks, moving out of the way as much as is possible. Unbalanced; that’s what it is. This feels— unbalanced. Odd. As if the order of things has been thrown out, shaken into a shape that no longer resembles the relationship that was previously so tenuous between them both.

Natori yawns, disrupts his thoughts.

“I’m going to get a few more hours, you should too, you look terrible.” He pauses, cracks a smile. “You know what I mean, not terrible. You never look terrible.”

Seiji stares at him, shrugging. “This is your fault, so no more comments from you, Natori.”

“Okay,” Natori says (in English: _Okei_!).

“Yes,” Matoba replies. Just—yes.

They sit in silence for a moment, neither lying back down, or shifting to pull the covers back up. Matoba glances at Shuuichi, and catches an expression on him that he had feared he’d see; there’s an unhappy little frown on the actor’s face, and he can’t place it, can’t read what it’s in reference to.

“Shuuichi?” Matoba says, the name hanging heavy between them; Natori’s first name, with no additions.

He is lacking his usual eloquence, Seiji thinks, lacking— his usual judgement, usual restraint, possibly everything. His head is clouded by this morning, and last night was a mistake, surely. He will sleep off this fog and return to his own room, phone Nanase, and tonight he will leave for Kumamoto, possibly leaving all of this in Tokyo along with Natori. There is no need for them to continue this when they return, surely, Natori has his obligations elsewhere.

Natori looks over at him, and Matoba nearly balks at the grave expression, watching as it is hidden and re-made into something pleasant.

“Yeah— Seiji?”

Matoba shakes his head, feeling his own cowardice eat at him. Knowing that something more needs to be added to that so that they do not break apart; he knows that this rests on him.

“It’s nothing,” he murmurs, but reaches out, stretches his arms towards Natori, and feels the man answer, taking ahold of him, arms around his waist, blond head pressed against his neck. Seiji swallows, throat convulsing, and holds him, his nose and mouth dropping to breathe in the scent of the top of Shuuichi’s head; shampoo; nothing strange or unfamiliar. He pulls back after a while, dislodging the embrace, and Matoba offers a smile; one that is not in his repertoire— it’s a little ugly on him, probably, the muscles fit it poorly; he’s one for smirks and fox smiles, not reassurance.

Their eyes meet, Natori’s hand curving against his spine, over his back, along the ribs that protrude there. He leans in, finds that Natori adjusts his posture for him, allows for sharp bones to settle against his own, allows for his scarred eye to rest in the crook of his neck, strokes through his hair, murmurs goodnight to him against his temple.

The trap is sprung, Matoba thinks, muzzily. He may as well be a spirit with its leg in a spell circle. He had known this was a poor idea, and yet— there is certainly no spell circle this warm or inviting, one that talks to him, calls him Seiji. 

There will be consequences, he thinks, feeling Natori hold him. No lovely thing comes without an equal and equivalent cost.

  
/////

  
Matoba pauses, ears pricked, listening for small tells that would alert him to something coming his way; for the preternatural music of the parade, for the sound of bells, the sound of the instruments that youkai revelers tend to carry with them; these are the things that often attract passing travelers; the unluckiest ones, who wander into those revelries unknowingly, only to find themselves amongst beings that are not human, not at all.

The rest of the clan have split up to go their various ways; the forest is warded heavily, so there is no easy way to get lost; one would just need to follow the ropes to find one’s way back to the clan’s main house. These things can get quite competitive; he knows, he’s always hung around when the party returns, waiting to see what they’d brought back, skittering to his father’s side, even as a very small child.

The ringing begins slowly, creeping up on him.

The clan heir’s ears buzz, and he shakes his head, wondering if perhaps his hearing will right itself if he leaves it be. It grows louder, though, reaching a peak, so loud that he has to stop, eyes shutting.

The forest feels very still to him, aside from the noise in his head; as if the night animals that would now be moving around, rustling through the trees, the birds that would be singing— have gone dead silent. 

The ringing takes a moment to register again, and he feels the pit of his stomach drop, his throat tightening.

A great, bleached creature is ambling towards him; he can barely make it out in the dark.

He realises what it is, at about the same moment he realises that behind him lies a thicket of thorn bushes.

A gashadokuro has cornered him; a massive skeleton creature, starving, a consumer of humans, and he feels fear lance through him, wheeling back from the thing as it propels itself closer to him; much faster than he would ever have anticipated a youkai of such size being able to move. 

His ears now ring with that horrible bell sound that proceeds an attack; the blood roaring in them too, and he clutches his head, tries to remember the charms that will protect him, tries to remember the other, more secret charms that his mother had taught him, always fearing that his father would take him on a hunt like this too young.

“My eye,” the thing moans, crashing into a tree near him.

Matoba ducks from the spray of leaves and branches, hearing birds disappearing into the sky at the intrusion.

“My eye, it hurts,” the thing howls again, and Matoba looks back, watching as it digs long, clawed human fingers into the soft earth at the base of the tree, burying its hands there.

“Hurts, hurts,” it says, a whicker vibrating from its open chest, its ribs expanding and contracting with false breath.

The creature careens towards him, and slams into the tree to his right, splitting the trunk clean in two with its bulk. He has never seen one of these in person; he has never seen them even at the exorcist meetings that he sneaks into, has never seen them at the clan house, when there are visiting exorcists from within Japan and from abroad. They are the most dangerous of creatures, he thinks, fear souring his gut, but also sharpening his senses; his vision is as clear as it has ever been; he sees each pore in the thing’s bones; and then— he spots the great stalk of bamboo that is growing out of its eye socket.

It clutches the ground where it has fallen, bones grating, a moan coming from its nearly unhinged jaw.

“My eye,” it whimpers, the sound drawing out long and low like a wounded animal.

There is no sound of the hunting party; they have gone off into the deeper woods, all pursuing their own quarries; his father will be at their head he’s sure, eager to show that his injuries are no deterrent, that he is as strong a clan head as he has ever been, just as brutal as he was in his youth.

The creature begins to wail, and Matoba shrinks away from it, his bow clutched in his hand, palms sweating. It must have scented him by now, he thinks, there is no way a powerful, ancient beast like this would not have. If he brings its skull back for the family archives, surely his father will see him as one of most promising clan heirs in a hundred years. They will write about it, even, in the history books, one day when he is old; his first prize, the first of so many to come.

“Show me your eye,” Matoba says, stepping out from his hiding place, his hands on his hips. He smiles like an imp, wending his way forwards, through the undergrowth. His heart hammers in his chest, but he controls the panic in his voice, knows that this will be neither the most fierce nor the largest youkai that he will face in his life.

The thing starts to sob loudly, clawing at its own eye, and he can see how the bamboo trunk sways. Matoba strains his eyes; it looks like it’s growing out of the eye socket, he thinks, like a wart; some sort of cancerous growth.

“What can you do for me, little exorcist brat,” it whines. “It hurts and your arms are small and weak.”

“Come here,” Matoba says, eyes widening at his own gumption, knowing that he’s playing a dangerous game.

The creature rises from where it had sunk into the dirt, and Matoba marvels at its size; the scope of it— it would be the most extraordinary prize, a trophy to impress his mother and Nanase, to show to his sister, to make her even more jealous than she already is. His father will see this, and surely the other exorcists of the clan— what a clan head this boy will make, they’ll say.

Its great head is lowered before him, and he looks into the eye sockets, seeing the swell of the skull behind it. The ropey line of its spine snakes out into the rest of the trees as it lies there, its limbs are longer than the beams across the main halls of the clan house

Matoba takes ahold of the bamboo that has sprouted in the one socket, bracing a foot against the bone of its cheek.

He pulls, hard, not feeling the branch budge in the slightest; its roots must be deep, he thinks, it must have been growing here for a long time, for months.

“Hurry, little exorcist, I cannot stand the pain,” the creature moans, its hands scraping at the forest floor, and Matoba has to cling to its skull to stop it from catching him in its great fingers.

Matoba huffs out a breath, and refocuses, leaning right into the hole of the socket, trying to find purchase on the base of the bamboo, in order to use his body weight to wrench it out.

The roots give way, unlatching from whatever innards of that skull they had grown into, and Matoba tumbles out of the eye socket, and back down into the dead leaves and muck of the forest floor. He stands, dusting himself off, his ears still ringing with the sound of the creature.

He looks up.

A great, skeletal arm has raised, and it grabs him.

The wind is knocked out of the clan heir, and he feels a bone in his arm snap, and he scrambles, crying out in fear and shocked pain. The creature leans in close to him, and he can feel its hot breath, though it has no lungs from which to expel it.

“Stupid little exorcist,” it says. “I have no pain, how gullible you are, you’ll be my dinner.”

The skeleton leans in, its jaw creaking open.

He will die here, alone in the forest, he thinks, unable to raise his uninjured arm, unable to hold the kimono sleeves up so that perhaps it will bite into an ofuda. His mother and father will find his body, he thinks; they will have no heir, his sister’s sight is weak; she will die too, eventually. The creature looms closer, its hold tightening further, and Matoba screams in pain at last, ribs cracking at the pressure.

Abruptly, the thing drops him.

Seiji rolls onto the ground, his breath forced out of him, winding him, and he shuts his eyes, attempting to scramble away, in the hopes that perhaps it has become distracted by another youkai, or an unfortunate crow. But, they love human blood, he knows; it will come for him.

The creature wails, this time, in real pain— the scream is different from the ones that it had used around Matoba; this is the high pitched wail of a woman; the voice taking on a different timbre altogether.

Seiji looks up.

His father steps from between some clan shiki, bow in hand; several exorcists beside him have raised their hands in mudras, freezing the youkai in place.

He shoots the thing between its eyes, the arrow piercing its skull.

It explodes into a swarm of black alpine butterflies (so often the messengers of youkai), whose iridescent wings shimmer into dust, leaving the party of exorcists and shiki standing in the middle of the woods, Seiji on the ground before his father, his arm bent at an odd angle, held against his chest.

“Were you the clan head, your family would be dead at your expense, now.”

His father does not soften his voice for the attending exorcists; they all hear, are all present to witness his son’s failure. 

Seiji cradles his arm, curling around it, and he cowers away from his father like a dog.

“No one will save you,” the man says, towering. “You will only ever have yourself.”

His father starts to walk away, back through the forest, though he turns, one final time; he’s not a man to soften his words; not for his daughter, and not for his son, either.

“Your life is not your own, learn that well.”

Matoba, humiliated, feels hot tears on his cheeks. The pain is one thing, and yes, his arm hurts like nothing he’s felt before— but the shame is another entirely. He has never shed tears out of pain before, and certainly, he does not start now.

  
/////

  
“Hey, have you been up to the Mori tower before?”

Matoba opens the bathroom door just a crack, and peers out at Natori, who is standing in the middle of the suite, iPhone in hand, holding out a picture of— a tower.

“No, why?”

“Nothing, I was just wondering,” Natori says, shrugging, slumping down into one of the armchairs by the window. The lounge area is larger than he remembers from last night; it’s lit by daylight now, and the view of Tokyo’s downtown area out of the main windows is stark; the colours muted, the sky washed of the smog of the past few days, turned into a blue so faded that it pales the skyline. 

Matoba closes the door behind him, turning on the taps of the bath. Did— Shuuichi mean that they would do something besides order some room service for breakfast? He cannot imagine the pair of them spending the day together here, he’s amazed that Shuuichi is so lively even after drinking so much last night. Hadn’t the actor drank more than him? Hadn’t he had a head start? There seems to have been no effect at all, Natori is as cavalier as ever, hardly slowed by any kind of hangover. It’s taken Matoba hours to feel like himself again; he’s about to take a bath, already overslept, spent ample time dwelling on the poor choices of the previous night, and sobered considerably by the bright day and a greasy, Western breakfast (he’d gone a bit feral on the French toast, much to Natori’s bemusement).

“You can see Fuji from up there.” Natori’s voice is muffled from behind the door.

“I can’t hear you,” Matoba says, not raising his voice, the sound completely lost in the crashing of the bathwater. He sits on the lip of the tub, fingers trailing to check the temperature. He’s not going up to the Mori tower; it’s far too late in the day. He suspects Shuuichi is conspiring to make him miss his flight. Natori won’t ask him outright, either; but, that makes things easier, he supposes. This is how things will go between them in the future, he’s certain; so much room left in order to avoid the embarrassment of having to make excuses; a free rein; easy to leave on.

  
/////

  
“Can you leave, so I can finish my bath in peace, Natori?” Matoba watches him, arms wound around his knees; embarrassed for no real reason.

“Okay,” Natori says, and rests his chin on the rim of the bath, his light-coloured lashes dipping.

Seiji’s hands, his fingers, clench against his own skin, and he stops himself from reaching out to Shuuichi, to invite him to join, to climb in with him, just in order to hold him again. 

“I won’t be long,” he says, more quietly.

“Kiss?” Natori’s gaze lifts, the whites of his eyes showing doggishly. 

Matoba swallows, throat clicking with the sound, and he leans forward just enough so that Natori will close the distance between them, so that Matoba doesn’t have to.

The water splashes quietly, and he feels the other exorcist’s hand on his jaw, his fingers lighting just at the dip of his cheekbone. The kiss breaks, but Matoba watches him, eyes hazy, his injured one exposed; the deep furrows running through it open to the air. He removes the ofuda when he bathes, of course; at home, he would have bathed in salt water first, and then a regular bath second. Natori does not flinch at the injury, and Matoba waits for him to, wonders if it repulses him; it is repulsive— he knows, he is not blind, after all.

Natori just keeps looking at him, fingers caught in Seiji’s hair.

Matoba tips his chin, shutting both eyes. He leans in, landing his lips against Natori’s; lightly this time.

They move apart and Natori meets his eyes, nodding, something hazy in the way he’s watching him.

“I’ll be— out there. Seiji,” he says, pushing himself to his feet, handsome in his grey t-shirt and jeans; more handsome than Matoba has ever seen him, jerking his thumb back towards the hotel room.

Matoba does not reply, sinking down into the cooling water, leaning back against the lip of the bath, his breath leaving him in a long exhalation, his face hot; muddled with shame and desire.

  
/////

  
“Hey, there you are.” Natori’s entire countenance brightens, much in the way of a golden retriever when it sees its owner after a prolonged time. “Nice bathrobe,” he says, and Matoba wishes to rescind all of the kind thoughts that just passed through his mind with regard to the man.

Matoba moves into the room, choosing an armchair to sit in, looking as if he’s been dropped there, bare feet pale and veiny against the thick carpet. Natori keeps looking at him, he thinks; it should not embarrass him— they are both men, it is normal to see each others’ bodies. It should he less than nothing that his hair is tucked behind his ears, fringe out of his face; combed back and wet. Whether or not Natori finds his face attractive means very little to him; Matoba’s always had a good sense of himself; an easy arrogance from always being the darling of the family, the most highly praised. Surely, Shuuichi must find it— passable, at least.

He reaches up, re-tucking a nonexistent strand of hair behind his ear unnecessarily.

“There is a shrine,” he starts, watching Shuuichi. “North West of Tokyo.”

Natori sits up, posture straightening, meeting his eyes as if this were the most serious discussion that has ever passed between them.

Matoba glances out the window and then back at Natori.

“I had thought to maybe to there today, to see it for myself. I rarely have any days when I can see an unusual sight while I am here.”

Natori nods, and looking at him intently.

Matoba blinks, going silent.

They watch each other.

Natori’s the first to look away. He raises a hand to rub at the back of his neck, tucking his socked feet beneath him on the couch, and mussing his hair to within an inch of its life.

“Oh, oh, yeah I mean— Tokyo’s got some of those. Shrines. Yeah, you should. Don’t feel like you have to hang around on my account, obviously—“ Natori laughs, a bit too loudly for the room, and it echoes.

Matoba remains silent, single red eye focused.

“There is a small festival, celebrating the god that it honours. Today,” he says, feeling awkwardness gnaw at his hands, so he folds them in his lap, fingers interlacing with each other, winding there.

“Cool,” Natori says, looking like he doesn’t find it particularly cool.

Matoba’s lips tighten, pale and almost invisible where they press together; the stiff look of a man much older than himself.

“I thought that perhaps, seeing as you are not busy— you may like to join me.”

“Yes,” Natori says, very abruptly. “I mean,” he continues, still fussing with his hair, “I haven’t been to any shrines here, and I need to get some souvenirs anyway.”

“Good,” Matoba says, standing. The awkward moment for him to return to his own room and to retrieve a change of clothing has, at last, arrived; he was in a suit last night, which has been discarded on Natori’s floor for the better part of last night and this morning, and it’s probably a crumpled mess for all he knows.

Natori, the more seasoned Casanova, seems to realise this.

“Hey—“

Matoba looks back at him, over a shoulder.

Natori seems to be in some sort of distress, he thinks, watching him with a bemused look.

“Uh,” Natori says, smiling, though it does not sit for long on his face, sobering awkwardly. “It’s fine if you want to get dressed back at your room but, I’ve got a lot of spare stuff here.” He lounges back on the couch, but then seems to rethink this, and springs up to where his suitcase is sitting on top of the luggage rack.

“We’re about the same height,” Natori says, rummaging. “Anything will look good on you, it’s not like we’re going for a fashion parade here, but—“ He pulls out a burgundy sweater, holding it in both hands for a moment, then taking it by the shoulders, and holding it up to Matoba.

Matoba, having not actually agreed to this yet, takes the clothing that Natori hands to him, watching as the pile in his arms grows. Fashion as Natori would put it, he expects, is not a particular forte of his. He has little interest in it, though he likes nice things; he is used to a uniform; either his business suit for funerals or for meeting with clients, and his kimono for all dealings on his estate, as well as his leisure time, depending on the season. He’s a creature of habit, in almost all things. This, too.

“Well,” Matoba says, looking at the clothing. “I’ll change here then.”

Natori’s looking at him, he notes, and he can’t place his expression; something good, but it’s unsure, like it could fall into affection or melancholy at a moment’s notice.

“Shuuichi?” Matoba calls, mouth curving upward.

“Yes, sorry,” Natori says, though Matoba can see something brighten in him when he hears his name; Natori seems to like to hear it from him, seems to find something reassuring in it. “Yeah, get changed here, I’ll—“ Natori smiles, shrugging at him, trailing off, and stepping closer. He hesitates, and Matoba says nothing, waiting. Natori just lays a hand on his arm, head ducking, before walking past him, and back into the living area. He picks his phone up where it was lying on the coffee table, and slings himself onto the couch, feet kicked up over the arm rest, looking the picture of casual.

Matoba pauses, holding the clothing, gathering it closer to himself.

Natori looks at him, and their eyes meet across the room. The smile that Shuuichi offers is enough, Matoba thinks, to embolden anyone. That is what he is certain Natori is good at, however; he would not be famous if his smiles could not make those around him feel adored and noticed. That does not reduce their, value, though, he thinks— not in the slightest.

  
/////

  
They sit in silence on the first of the train rides; Matoba had actually been the one to suggest it; he thinks it’s novel, traveling like this— they do not have such a bustling system in Kumamoto; one would have to travel by taxi, or private car out there in the countryside. Taking out his seldom used JR pass, and swiping in to the Odakyu line is novel to him; a fascinating experience to be surrounded by the denizens of Tokyo; the women here dress as if they are French, he noticed; the fashion at the moment seems to be berets; how curious. He waits beside the vending machine on the platform once they’ve arrived, watching as Natori eyes all of the different drinks, his mouth doing that sloped thing that it tends to do when he’s considering something.

“Will you get me a jasmine tea?” Matoba chimes, skinny hand raising so that he can examine his fingernails.

“Jasmine tea,” Natori echoes, “jasmine tea— oh, here you go.”

He puts a coin in, and the sound of the drink being dispatched clatters through the machine. Natori stoops and picks it up, unscrewing the top, then handing it to Matoba. Seiji watches him, bemused, but takes it, lifting the cap off and taking a drink. 

“You know, I love trains,” Natori says, bending to select a milk coffee for himself, warming his hands against it once he retrieves it from the vending machine. “I usually get driven around when I’m here, so I don’t get to do this.”

“Hm,” Seiji says, examining the label of his tea. “This line goes all the way to Enoshima, you’d enjoy that I expect.”

“Yeah, let’s go one day.”

Matoba gives him a look, and takes another drink before glancing up at display board.

“Ah, other platform.”

They take the stairs and cross through the small connecting bridge, and Seiji walks to the end of the covered platform, to sit on a bench, finding a patch of sun while they wait. Natori stands, loitering next to him, looking casual and inconspicuous in his coat and bucket hat, his glasses jammed down on his nose. Matoba can’t decide if he likes or dislikes the whole look; there is something in being aware that beneath those trappings hides one of Japan’s most darling celebrities, he supposes. Natori hides a lot of things, he thinks, looking at him as the man watches the tracks, a little frown on his mouth while he does. It’s not necessarily deceitful though; he hides a surprising gentleness; one that Matoba had only guessed at before, had never known first hand, not until last night. It had been Seiji’s first time with a man; he grew up in the woods in a traditional clan family; he’d simply been raised to look towards marriage, to sex as a means to an end; that end being heirs of strong blood and sight.

The distant siren of the crossing starts to sound, and the train comes clattering into the station, the doors pinging as they open, and a few people file out; it’s not busy today; a weekday and around lunchtime— particularly going in the opposite direction from Shinjuku station’s main hub. They board the train, Matoba seated on the corner, Natori beside him. 

Cautiously, Matoba leans a shoulder towards Natori’s, touching it as if by accident.

Natori’s turns to look at him, leaning back, fringe in his eyes, and Seiji’s face twitches into something amused and fond, before he looks back out the window, the train starting to leave the station, the telephone wires passing quickly as the next stop is announced.

The suburbs of Tokyo look as blanched as the rest of the city, but with the good weather, despite the cold, there is a cheeriness to the day that warms him. Natori’s shoulder too, is a warm press against his own, and the rocking of the train starts to drag his eyes shut, chin dipping downward towards his chest. It would be nothing to sleep here, like this, leaning into Natori to eventually rest his head on the man’s shoulder; he’d trust the actor to wake him in time for their stop, too. It could be excused to the casual observer, maybe; he simply fell asleep on this handsome stranger; a tired commuter, nothing more than that.

But, he refrains instead, raising a hand to rub at his exposed eye (he’s wearing the ofuda here, of course; he’s never been too worried about how much it makes him stand out— people rarely comment on it; too polite to say anything, and often too wary of its strangeness, what it belies). It is best not to venture too boldly; not in public. They are both men; who knows what people might suspect.

Natori’s foot stretches, to nudge against his own.

“Sleepy?” Natori murmurs.

Seiji replies, “Mm, no.” 

But he knows that his eyes are swollen from the alcohol and lack of sleep.

The train rattles, and the announcer chimes out the coming station.

He can sense Natori’s smile when he speaks again.

“You’re so sleepy,” Natori says, glancing at Matoba.

There’s no arguing with him, Matoba thinks, and nudges his own foot against Shuuichi’s in retaliation, glad for the empty train compartment. He feels the man’s shoulder press all the closer.

  
/////

  
He walks up to the row of shrine maidens, working behind the stalls on their tatami mats. Matoba eyes the charms; the bells— a few ceremonial arrows, even (though none of them are like the clan arrows, of course; useless on youkai— probably useless on people too). He buys a small ward, admiring the silk of its casing.

Natori is eating something, he muses, as he walks back over to him, watching as the man pays at a temporary gazebo, his bucket hat pulled low over his eyes, his fringe sticking out from beneath the foolish accessory.

“Here,” Natori says, taking a bite of the hotcake and then holding it out to Seiji. “I got another one, but it’s too hot still.”

“So kind.” Matoba examines the thing, and the missing piece that Natori’s now chewing. 

It’s got the insignia of the shine stamped into it; a lucky cat.

“Cat, see?” Natori says, mouth full, gesturing to the image of the cat.

“You don’t say,” Matoba answers, taking a bite of the pastry, finding the red bean filling still warm within it.

They sit on some nearby stairs to finish the dorayaki cakes, in a corner of sunlight that filters through the shrine’s red maples; Matoba stretches his legs out, crossing them at the ankles, eyes closed to the sun. Natori’s lounging back on one elbow, and Matoba doesn’t spare him a glance; he knows he’ll just be drawn in if he does, that he’ll want to go to him and be nearer; and they’re in the middle of a crowded shrine garden; it’s not appropriate.

Seiji clears his throat, and Natori looks over, inquiring.

“Shuuichi,” he starts, reaching into the pocket of the borrowed coat. “I got you something.”

Matoba draws out the omamori charm, looking down at it, then handing it to Natori.

Natori sits up quite abruptly, immediately shaken out of his slumped, lazy sprawling, and receives the little thing with both hands. The formality of this gesture makes Matoba smile; wanting to laugh at him, but refraining; sparing him that.

“It’s not as effective as an ofuda, of course, but it’s beautiful. Perhaps it can protect you while you remain in Tokyo.” Matoba watches as Natori looks down at the thing, holding it with a reverence that it certainly does not deserve; it’s just a shrine charm, he thinks, a silly little trinket.

“Thank you,” Natori says, looking at Seiji gravely. “I’ll keep it with me.”

Matoba blinks, feeling heat in his ears. “Good,” he says, looking down at the paper that the pastry had been wrapped in, tearing it to scraps. “I’m glad.”

“I’ll bring you a present when I’m back in town,” Natori says, thumbing the omamori.

“Not necessary.” Seiji pulls the slightly oversized coat around himself more tightly against the cold breeze, the dark strands of his hair lifted, floating in it.

“To start with, you should keep that sweater.”

“Don’t overdo it, Shuuichi. Think of it as a pact,” Matoba says. “I’ll return it to you when we see each other back in Kumamoto.”

That seems to brighten Natori’s fallen look, and the man shuffles closer on the steps, leg knocking against Matoba’s.

“Okay, yes. You can wear it at my apartment.”

Matoba raises an eyebrow, and Natori shrugs at him, holding up his hands, the thin, red string of the charm dangling from between his fingers.

“Am I invited to your apartment?” Matoba asks, starting to gather up their belongings, his hair slipping down and into his face, dark fringe obscuring the ofuda that he wears even more-so than usual.

“Yes,” Natori says, standing, offering Matoba a hand.

He takes it, allows Shuuichi to pull him to his feet, and allows too the moment when he is pulled in closer, when the hold goes on for longer than simply a friendly grab, feels Natori’s fingers slot between his for the briefest moment before the man stands aside and allows him to pass as if nothing had happened at all.

  
/////

  
Natori looks at the character on the omamori: protection from evil.

That is just it, he thinks, looking at the delicate red threads woven into the kanji, eyes then dragging upward to the shining dark head in front of him, the back of that pale neck thin and stark.

Matoba Seiji keeps a lot of people safe.

Natori brushes past him, a hand settling on his shoulder blade, and their eyes meet. Seiji blinks at him; slow and affectionate, like a sharp, beautiful cat.

That is just it, Natori thinks again; he is always protecting everyone, everything around him, afraid it will fall into ruin and that he’ll be the common cause; the clan head to allow that ending.

He makes a quiet pact, like he had at the shrine’s altar, to, in turn, protect Seiji too.

But, he thinks, slipping the omamori into his pocket, and reaching to take Matoba’s hand; quietly, secretly; hidden by all of the tourists around them— but, pacts are for shiki. A pact isn’t really good enough, not for a Matoba head. Certainly not good enough for Seiji.

That profile turns to him, the eyebrows arched in question; _how daring, risking this— holding hands in public?_ Natori’s sure that’s what he is thinking; the look says enough.

A promise then, he thinks, and smiles, feeling Seiji’s fingers tense and finally clutch his own, dark hair swept into his face by the wind, catching on his lip, features as sharp as a feline’s, but more delicate, he thinks, than possibly those of anyone he’s known.

Matoba drops his hold after tolerating it for a second, and Natori watches him tuck both hands into his coat pockets, beginning to direct their stroll towards the mouth of the temple, the small gate leading back out into the residential street outside. As they cross the threshold, Natori looks up, squinting.

“Look, spiderweb.”

Matoba looks too, breathing out through his nose. “Golden orb weaver,” he says. “A nasty youkai if they live longer than ninety-nine years, you know.”

“Uh huh.”

Matoba can’t seem to allow any topic to just rest, however. “Oh yes, don’t you know?” Matoba walks closer to him, tucking an arm into the crook of Natori’s, the heat of him present even through his overcoat. There is no foot traffic on the road through the neighbourhood; the bicycle-riding mothers and old women with their groceries seem to have remained inside today.

“Tell me,” Natori says, tilting his head back as a breeze picks up, his fringe carded back off his forehead.

“It is quite the interesting tale.” Matoba huffs an odd laugh to himself, and Natori feels that eye on him. “A cousin of mine was almost wed to one. You can imagine how it ended.”

“Can I,” Natori says.

“Yes, yes.” Matoba waves his free hand, falling into step with Natori, the houses of the Gotokuji area passing them by, their front doors flanked by bonsai trees and pot plants; children’s tricycles left outside in the street. There’s a crisp feeling in the air, different from the past few days; Autumn lends itself to Matoba, he thinks, it suits him; and he looks content in it, like the colours please him. There is a familiarity about Seiji, Natori thinks— not to Natori personally, but a sense of homeyness that’s in accordance with this season. Fires and red leaves, overcoats and blustery weather; the smell of wood smoke. He imagines if he leaned over and breathed in that black hair, he’d smell of it. Matoba Seiji is a creature of nostalgia; even Natori feels it; that sense of something long forgotten, once held dear.

There’s a small coffee shop, about half way through the town, and Natori breaks apart from Matoba to order at the old fashioned take-away counter; paying through the window. They wander through the side streets, Matoba stops outside a cluttered bookstore; the shelves spilling out into the street.

He pauses, still as a hunting dog.

“What?” Natori asks, walking up behind him, and peering over his shoulder.

He can’t see anything in the shop; just the musty, untidy store; piles of old books on the floor.

Matoba turns to him and smiles, both hands wrapped around his coffee, his lips thinned into a crescent.

“Nothing,” he says, and Natori doesn’t believe that for a second.

“Sure.” Shuuichi feels a flicker of irritation; this is how Matoba is, how he will always be. Seeing things that are foggy and unclear to Natori, seeing them in what he imagines is high definition clarity. Seiji, he thinks, forcing himself to smile, instead of the grumpy expression that had begun to take over— Seiji will always have one foot in a world that he has no place in, no right to. No matter how close they become, maybe. He wonders if this may be what ends things between them, eventually, once they’ve grown more used to each other, once things have cooled. It still, even now, feels as if Matoba is laughing at him, a private joke that he’s too slow for, not sharp enough to catch.

“Shuuichi?”

Natori looks up, Seiji’s standing closer to him, an eyebrow raised.

“Sorry, uh, let’s go,” Natori says, but Matoba doesn’t move.

“Are you well?” There’s that light, airy tone in Seiji’s deep voice.

“Yes, sorry, come on.” Natori starts back down along the side street, and Matoba steps to his side, walking closer than before, looking at him out of the corner of his eye. Natori notices, and touches a hand to his back, leaving it there just for a moment.

Matoba looks at him now, and Natori can’t read the expression at all.

“I thought I saw a cat.”

“Huh?” Natori frowns at him, glancing back over his shoulder at the bookstore further down the road, then to Seiji. “Back there?”

“Yes,” Matoba says, and Natori swallows miserably, knowing he’s jumped again, his thoughts had leapt to their usual conclusions, doing Seiji a disservice once more, keeping the benefit of the doubt far from him, as if he did not deserve it. Mean, Natori thinks. That was— mean of him. Matoba deserves better. 

“Oh. I thought maybe—“

“No,” Matoba says, still holding onto his coffee cup with both of his hands; spidery fingers interlaced.

Natori glances up and down the street, finding that they’re alone— for the time being; the only other establishment is a wood clad izakaya that seems to be closed; its windows dark and shuttered. He leans to wrap an arm around Matoba’s waist, nose and mouth tipping to press against his shoulder. He rests his chin there for a moment, before moving back, cautious not to overstay his welcome; not here in public, even with no one around to observe.

“We’ll find you some more cats, I promise.” Natori’s hand lingers on the other exorcist’s elbow.

Seiji’s eye has gone half-lidded, and Natori marvels at him; how he can so easily tread between strangeness and affection; being known and unknowable all at once. He’s really very beautiful, he thinks, feeling his heart contract as they look at each other, the warmth that was there throughout the morning still present; lingering.

  
/////

  
Once, years before, there had been a Summer that had crept up on Kumamoto prefecture. The early days of it had drowned them in a rainy season that lasted a full month and a half; the longest in living memory, and it had been rumoured that it was because the wife of one of the mountain gods in the area had taken ill with a Summer fever. The air had stuck to skin, and the sky had been that green-grey; and it had rained in a constant deluge, day and night.

Of course, the rain meant that going outside was forbidden unless one had a raincoat and umbrella, and Seiji had been confined to his bedroom with allergies; both stuffy and miserable at being unable to go and hunt the kappa that would be undoubtedly enjoying the rain down at the little stream, a stone’s throw from the mouth of the woods. The allergies cleared in a few days, but the rain stayed on, and he’d had no choice but to puzzle away at his homework, only bored further by the math problems.

“Matoba,” Nanase says, standing in the hallway outside his bedroom.“There is someone here to see you.”

Matoba clambers to his feet, frowning in curiosity. He puts his school books back on his desk; he’d been studying on the floor; staring at the pages of notes. He gives Nanase a quizzical look as he passes her, and pads out to the reception room in his school socks, stopping at the door to the room when he sees who it is standing there, in the genkan.

“Hi,” Natori Shuuichi says, glancing over Matoba’s shoulder and into the rest of the house.

“Shuuichi,” Matoba says, “what are you doing here?”

“Nothing,” Natori says, snapping, and his cheeks colour and he hesitates, before reaching up to muss his head of blond hair, the fringe sticking up when he does.

“I mean, I was around and I wanted to ask you— for your help with something.”

Behind Matoba, the house is more silent than it has been perhaps in his entire life. The incense burns to chase the scent of illness. There have been no celebrations — no dinners or meetings; his father has been as silent as the house itself, has stayed in his rooms and has been keeping to the forest, out in the woods until late at night. The doctors are not coming today; there will likely be no more doctors; there is only so much that they can do for something that has taken hold of a body, for something that has spread.

Matoba glances towards Nanase, but the woman is moving off, leaving the pair of them to their own devices, disappearing back into the darkness of the hallway without a further word, back to his mother’s rooms, he supposes, trying not to think of her. 

He is left alone with Shuuichi, and Natori lingers in the doorway, not entering any further than he’s already come, not moving to take off his shoes.

“Uh,” Natori starts, looking strained. “It’s cool if you’re busy. I can just ask someone else, or— I can come another time, I don’t m—“

“Come on,” Matoba says, grabbing his arm, and bounding past, pulling Natori along with him, pausing only to slip his shoes on, and then grabbing for Natori’s sleeve again shortly after, walking out ahead of him and into the driveway.

The rain outside pours, and Natori stops him, jerking him back from stepping out into the downpour. He goes to fetch an umbrella from where he had left it outside the front entrance, leaned against the wall. Seiji drifts out into the rain anyway, meandering away from Shuuichi, the rain drenching him.

“You’ll get sick,” Natori says, grouchily opening the umbrella and walking over to him, holding it above both of their heads. Above, thunder rolls, and Matoba feels his wet hair drip down his face, down his cheeks. He feels Natori’s eyes on him, watching him.

“Is everything okay with your family, it—“

“I’m fine,” Matoba chirps, smiling at him, though the smile is as watery as the weather, heavy with rain.

“Okay,” Natori says, as they start walking down the drive, the sound of their shoes on the gravel dulled by the continuous drone of the downpour.

When Seiji looks back at the clan house, it seems consumed, as if separated from the real world, engulfed in its cloud of fog; the mist hanging around the trees, obscuring the old roof and all of its charms written into the rafters, turning the place strange and foreign to him, almost like the house is not the one that he knows, but a different house, one where death lurks close at hand, with disease in its walls.

He wants then, nothing more than to be so far from the house that he can no longer see it or smell its incense and tatami, to leave it far behind him.

Shuuichi keeps looking at him out of the side of his eye, he thinks, feeling his face burn — what had he seen in there before Nanase called Seiji from his bedroom, what had Nanase told him?

They leave the long drive up to the Matoba clan estate, passing the trees that flank it — the ropes in their branches an eerie reminder of the nature of the home, and to whom it belongs. They exit out of its mouth and into the tarred forest road that runs past it, starting down towards where it leads to town.

“So,” Matoba says, falling into step with Natori. “Where are we going?”

Natori’s slow to answer, and Matoba sees his hand tighten on the handle of the plastic umbrella.

“My house,” he says. “You’ve already been there once, so it won’ t be a surprise or anything. But, I want to show you something.”

“Ooh,” Matoba says, “Shuuichi’s house. I want to go.”

“Don’t be rude,” Natori grumbles at him. “I wasn’t even going to ask you.”

“And why’s that?” Matoba asks, narrowing his eyes, surprised at the way the words leave him; he’d hissed, just short of snapped at Natori.

Natori looks at him sharply, whole attention jumping to the Matoba clan heir, and he pauses, water dripping down from the umbrella down, onto his shoulder.

“Uh— it’s just a spell,” he says, tucking his free hand into his pocket, eyes turning down to the road, fringe hanging low into his eyes. “It’s nothing special, you’ll probably think it’s stupid.”

“Oh,” Matoba says, and goes quiet, eyes cast down to the road, too.

They walk in silence for a while, the rain hard against the umbrella. Natori holds the umbrella further out from himself than maybe he needs to, Matoba notes; it keeps dripping on his shoulder, the rain entirely kept off the Matoba clan heir.

The Natori house is smaller than the Matoba estate— but, of course it is. Once, they were great rival clans, but the Natori name died along with its abilities. Until Shuuichi was born, of course, Matoba thinks.

“This way,” Natori says, and Matoba is surprised to note that Natori does not invite him inside. After all, the rain is still pouring down around them; Natori’s whole street, running from the road and down to his house, had been flooded, and they’d gotten their sneakers wet in it; the muddy puddles seeping through the canvas of Seiji’s shoes and into his socks. He squelches along behind Natori, eyes dragged towards the shapes of the pine trees, pruned just like those of the Matoba clan.

Natori seems to have noticed the need for an explanation, because he stops, causing Seiji to walk into him.

“Sorry,” Natori starts, and Matoba watches him carefully, seeing something embarrassed in his face. “My father’s home, it’s better if we go out to the back — there’s a shed there that I use to study—“

Natori glances down again, not waiting for Matoba’s response, not seeming to want it. He was right to, Matoba thinks, finding the smirk that had crept across his mouth withering. He’d wanted to tease; living in the garden of one’s own house— how unbefitting of a clan heir. But, he bites his tongue, and just follows instead, feeling as if they have both been shut out of their respective houses, though for very different reasons.

Not so different, though, he thinks. Not this time.

Natori opens the wooden door of the shed, standing aside to let Matoba in first. It’s musty in here, he thinks, smelling books; the scent of wax paper catches his attention too— the type one would paint with incantations, with wards, with the names of gods; the very type that his father wears over his injured, scarred eye.

“Just— sit anywhere,” Natori says, gesturing to where a few piles of books surround a tiny area that looks as if it has been recently tidied. The shed is unremarkable and full of spiderwebs, Matoba notes, slinking into the room, and the paper that it houses has been wet, as has the wood— not an ideal situation for housing family archives. There must be a leak; everything smells heavily of decaying paper and rain and rot.

However, that does not dull its intrigue to Seiji, and he runs a hand over the spines of bound volumes, all stacked tightly into the nearest bookcase. The Natori clan were papersmiths, he recalls, they worked with the twin material of the Matoba clan, who were always the masters of ink and the written word. Had there been peace between them, he thinks, maybe the Matoba and Natori clans would have been powerful allies; with their complimentary strengths — ink and paper; there was no jitsu more deadly than that.

“Could you come here?” Natori says, sitting down cross-legged on the floor.

Matoba does not listen to him just yet; he wants to take the books down from these shelves and read them, to page through and see what secrets of this nearly dead clan they hold, to paw through the Natori clan history, all of it.

“It is forbidden to take an enemy clan member into your library,” Matoba says, not turning around yet. “What if I stole all of your secrets for myself?”

Natori is silent for a while, and Matoba can hear him moving things around, then, he says, “I don’t care about all that, just don’t touch anything you’re not supposed to.”

Matoba looks back over his shoulder towards Natori, finally abandoning the bookshelf. He steps over the piled scrolls and books.

“Just—“ Natori reaches to move another pile of papers from a spot on the floor, clearing it for Seiji. “Here.”

Matoba picks his way over, looking across at Shuuichi now, properly, finding that the other teenager’s hair has frizzed up from the humidity of the rain. Natori meets his eyes, looking at him too— he feels Natori’s attention move over his face, to his hair and then back downwards, over his features. Seiji feels a strange embarrassment start to overtake him, and he looks down, instead picking up the book that’s open before Natori on the ground.

Natori clears his throat, taking the volume back. He opens it — the script is what catches Seiji’s attention first; it writhes before them both on the page; the characters looking as if they are breathing, moving by themselves, of their own accord, as if they were alive. It is far too old for him to read; the kanji curl and uncurl softly in their rows, and he leans in, eyes widening at them, wondering what they say, what strange spells they could house.

“And this?” Matoba says, reaching to touch the characters.

“Not this,” Natori answers quickly, sliding the book away from Seiji. He looks up at him, and then back down to the page.

“I’m just using this— to keep something in. Of course I can’t read this—“ Natori raises a hand to rub at the back of his neck, looking bashful. “It’s not written normally, and besides, I don’t have anyone to teach me, before you start—“

“I can’t read it either,” Matoba says, eyes now turned to what Natori is pulling out of the back pages of the book.

He barks a laugh when he sees them, their little paper hands all holding to the one before, looking like the paper chains of children; as coarse and as childlike as a kindergartener would have cut them, too— utterly lacking in any kind of finesse.

Natori glares, but says nothing, taking out the pressed string of paper shiki and holding them in his hands. He looks shy about this, Matoba thinks, reaching out to take hold of one end, allowing them to drape across the space between them.

“You know,” Natori starts. “The Natori clan were known for their paper magic.”

“Mmhm,” Matoba says, lifting the line of paper dolls higher, so that they do not drag on the ground. Their blank faces remind him of the round masks of the Matoba clan shiki. Those things have their false life, though— these do not have a function yet, so they are, well— dead. For all intents and purposes.

“Long ago, the Natori exorcists used to use them to send messages to each other, like a—“ he pauses, looking a little desperately across at Matoba, fringe hanging in his eyes, voice dying.

“If you don’t want to know any of this, I can just walk you back home, I don’t care,” Natori says, reeling the paper dolls back in, and jamming them back between the pages of the book. “I’m sure the Matoba clan have all kinds of tricks, I don’t know why I even thought that this—“

“No,” Seiji says, “show me.”

There’s a silence from Natori, as he looks down at the paper chain, mouth setting into a determined line.

“Don’t laugh,” Natori says fiercely, and Matoba nods, unused to being spoken to so directly.

“Okay,” he replies, voice lowered.

“If you whisper to one of these,” Natori says, hands moving into a simple mudra, and one of the dolls breaks away from its twins to curl into his hand, moulding gently to the shape of his palm. “They can take messages. They can get pretty far on a clear day, I think— I couldn’t really test it because of the rain. They seem to get a bit confused when there’s bad weather, I think they use the sun and moon to navigate.”

Matoba looks across at him.

“I thought that maybe—“ Natori hesitates, then hands the rest of the paper shiki to Matoba. “Maybe if you wanted to, I could send you a message, and you could send one back to me.” Another pause follows, and then, more quietly, he adds: “If you want.”

Outside, the rain seems to be reaching the point of cloudburst, and a crack of thunder shakes the windows of the shed, making them both jump.

“Okay,” Matoba says, accepting the bunch of paper dolls, looking down at them, feeling as if he’s been given a gift; something more precious than it appears.

“Well, cool.” Natori’s back to looking at the book again, but Matoba looks up from the paper shiki just in time to catch the hint of a smile on his face, lingering there, nearly obscured by a hand. 

After that rainy season, his mother had died, and the paper shiki had been forgotten; left in a drawer, growing mould, and only once in a while rattling his drawer, before finally disintegrating, unreturned to their original master.

  
/////

  
“Udon?” Nanase asks, looking disinterested, blazer shrugged over her shoulders.

They’ve just checked their bags (the exorcism equipment can’t viably be taken in carry on; the knives, you see). Matoba purses his lips at they stand outside the udon shop, considering the menu, parades of tourists and suitcases passing back and forth in the food court area; there are plastic autumn leaves strung up around the entrances of restaurants. He’d left Natori in that hotel room, allowed the man to kiss him as if they were parting for years; he’s certain it won’t be so different— the week that they are to be apart. Matoba Seiji had no love affairs as a teenager; but this is what they feel like, he’s sure, this is what he has not had, before in his life. 

At least, he thinks, Natori had looked utterly miserable when he left. Good, as he ought to.

“Ah, udon, yes, shall we?” Seiji moves the linen curtain aside and they duck into the shop.

Once seated at the counter, Matoba feels Nanase’s eyes on him; she regards him cooly; always has, since he was a child. She’d been his mother’s confidant, and now she is his. He’s certain that she knows everything, all details of his dalliance with Shuuichi, and that she is silently trying to decide whether or not to bring it up to him, to warn him, very politely, in her way.

“We can’t be long, our flight is for eight,” Nanase says, going back to the menu.

“Yes,” Matoba answers, glancing at her, and then his own menu.

They eat in silence once their bowls arrive; Nanase mechanically slurping her noodles beside him. If Nanase did not mention anything before dinner, he thinks, then she will likely never mention it ever again. The subject is cold, he supposes, the discussion window closed. Not discussing it is almost the same thing as approval, he thinks, picking at the spring onions floating in his broth; and there will be no approval, not of this.

“Matoba,” Nanase starts, eyes on her bowl.

“Mm?”

“You do know that your mother and I were close?” Matoba’s attention is suddenly taken up by the conversation; the mention of his mother is no idle chatter between them, and he wonders at her timing. It is not polite to discuss such heavy subjects over food— she had waited, had ample time before hand. Had she hesitated? How unlike her, Matoba thinks, curious.

“Yes,” he answers.

“I think,” Nanase begins, and Matoba can see that the steam from the udon has fogged her glasses. “That there is perspective given, when someone dear to us is lost prematurely.”

He waits, feeling the sting at the mention of his dead mother, knowing that she shares it. They do not speak like this; himself and Nanase, they barely ever have.

“Life is short, Seiji,” she says, and meets his eyes over the top of her glasses, the gravity of her expression derails the relative lightness of such a statement. “Take happiness where you can.”

A woman of no more words than that, she offers him a vague, but gentle smile, and returns to her dinner, and Matoba looks down at his own bowl. He’s glad for the distracting, lulling noise of the restaurant, for the repetitive motion of eating.

  
/////

  
Once in the plane, over Tokyo, Matoba watches the city grow smaller; the lights of Tokyo Tower in the Western part of the city and the futuristic beam of the Skytree in the East. Always, as it is when going home, more awaits him than he has left behind in the various cities across the island. Tonight perhaps, he thinks, is the first time that this is not the case, not entirely. 

He feels his phone vibrate, and scratches through his hand luggage for it. Mr. Nakamura, probably, he thinks; a little delayed for a thank you, but these modern CEO’s are not so known for their politeness. He flips the phone open, glancing down at the screen.

With a jolt of surprise, he sees the name of the sender: Natori Shuuichi.

Beside the name, programmed into his contacts, he notes with a confused mix of horror and humiliated joy, is a foolish, embarrassing emoji.

Seiji shuts the phone. 

He will wait, he decides, and read it once Nanase-san has fallen asleep, lulled into her customary airplane nap by the motion of flying.

After all, some things are his, only.

**Author's Note:**

> We all know what that emoji was, let's be honest.
> 
> Dedicated to my most favorite person, Roe (as usual), who gave me the most brilliant feedback on the first draft of this. And who knows Natori Shuuichi better than Midorikawa herself.


End file.
